How does God's omniscience negate an individual's agency / free will?

[Stargazer]

On 7/17/2023 at 6:41 AM, mfbukowski said:

Thanks for your reply, but I believe you are in error.  It was probably 50 years ago when I first read ""Flatland".  That is about dimensions, not time.

Time is about experience, it is the memory of the succession of our experiences, one "after" another which we collectively call "time"

I think your comments above are self-contradictory.

Saying there was "no before the beginning" contradicts "seeing the end from the beginning", because that wording IMPLIES that there must have been a "before the beginning" if God can "see " it as a succession of experiences! 

If the "beginning" is experienced "before" the "end" there is a succession of experiences, and therefore "time"

Any SUCCESSION of events implies "time"

It's just semantic confusion, imo.

 All we have are human words describing human experience, and God IS human and has voluntarily taken upon himself immanence so that the atonement could happen.  I said that perhaps a little fast, but if you really want to get into it.

But I think we have been here before, to no avail.

 

Flatland is about dimensions, yes. It's an analogy, which by its very nature is not precise. It illustrates how a being existing in two dimensions cannot even comprehend the third dimension. 

Is time a dimension? In physics, the technique of dimensional analysis treats it as such. Maybe that's immaterial.

Do you agree with Hawking's assertion, that in the Big Bang there was no time for a creator to exist in? And therefore there can be no creator? If Hawking was right, then God cannot exist. 

My assertion is that since God initiated the Big Bang, and our universe, He must exist outside of it (since it is absurd to imagine that He created Himself in the Big Bang). Since our time began at the moment of the Big Bang, God must be both outside of our space and our time. I'm going to call His universe (which encloses ours) the Universe, and His time Time (both capitalized). Or, to make it more obvious, Superuniverse and Supertime. And since God exists in Supertime, not time, He sees our time from beginning to end. Obviously, God can craft or guide events within our time and space. He knows what happens at the end because he has access to all of it from beginning to end.

We exist along a "timeline" within this universe. Because we are inside this universe, we cannot see what is to come beyond our limited ability to predict future events from past events. But because God is outside of it, He sees it all, and influences it all. He cannot be surprised.

I am convinced that this is at least reasonable. But all in all, no-one's salvation is at risk either believing this or disbelieving it.

 

[mfbukowski]

On 7/19/2023 at 1:34 PM, Stargazer said:

Flatland is about dimensions, yes. It's an analogy, which by its very nature is not precise. It illustrates how a being existing in two dimensions cannot even comprehend the third dimension. 

Is time a dimension? In physics, the technique of dimensional analysis treats it as such. Maybe that's immaterial.

Do you agree with Hawking's assertion, that in the Big Bang there was no time for a creator to exist in? And therefore there can be no creator? If Hawking was right, then God cannot exist. 

My assertion is that since God initiated the Big Bang, and our universe, He must exist outside of it (since it is absurd to imagine that He created Himself in the Big Bang). Since our time began at the moment of the Big Bang, God must be both outside of our space and our time. I'm going to call His universe (which encloses ours) the Universe, and His time Time (both capitalized). Or, to make it more obvious, Superuniverse and Supertime. And since God exists in Supertime, not time, He sees our time from beginning to end. Obviously, God can craft or guide events within our time and space. He knows what happens at the end because he has access to all of it from beginning to end.

We exist along a "timeline" within this universe. Because we are inside this universe, we cannot see what is to come beyond our limited ability to predict future events from past events. But because God is outside of it, He sees it all, and influences it all. He cannot be surprised.

I am convinced that this is at least reasonable. But all in all, no-one's salvation is at risk either believing this or disbelieving it.

 

I think that applying a scientific approach to religion is a huge category error, and is fundamentalism

The same category error is found in arguments about evolution, young earthers, old earthers, etc.

If Hawking thought that way, he did not even understand what philosophy is about. Philosophy takes it up a level in abstraction, it about how to think clearly, not the mechanics of how gizmos work, or how the universe works.

Religion is a grand paradigm which gives us purpose in life, which is verifiable by its doing so.

It is not about mechanics, or the construction of planet earth and the universe.

That should have ended in Galileo's lifetime, but here we still are trying him for blasphemy.  It's a shame.

Edited July 22, 2023 by mfbukowski
Clarification

[mfbukowski]

On 7/19/2023 at 1:34 PM, Stargazer said:

I am convinced that this is at least reasonable. But all in all, no-one's salvation is at risk either believing this or disbelieving it.

This is the core of the issue which is essential: why discuss this kind of stuff at all.

Each of us has no doubt that we can stop dealing with this issue, and go and do something else.

ARE WE DESTINED FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME TO WRITE THESE WORDS ON THIS DAY, AND NOT BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE?

Who really cares? 

There is no pragmatic difference.

That is undebatable. Respond or don't.

Your choice.

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

This is the core of the issue which is essential: why discuss this kind of stuff at all.

Each of us has no doubt that we can stop dealing with this issue, and go and do something else.

ARE WE DESTINED FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME TO WRITE THESE WORDS ON THIS DAY, AND NOT BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE?

Who really cares? 

There is no pragmatic difference.

That is undebatable. Respond or don't.

Your choice.

I still get a lot of enjoyment and brain stimulation from imagining and discussing these things. One can survive on just potatoes and hamburger. But once in a while a few slices of pepperoni pizza is a lovely treat.

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

I still get a lot of enjoyment and brain stimulation from imagining and discussing these things. One can survive on just potatoes and hamburger. But once in a while a few slices of pepperoni pizza is a lovely treat.

I agree, of course, in principle, except that gives me indigestion.

Even in those things, one person's answer is not necessarily the same for everyone.  

So what is the one true treat?

And what procedures would one take to find it?

There can be no KNOWABLE reality which humans can or will know, and we our limited to what work for us individually, as discovered through experiences including spiritual experiences.

To me, this is the problem with many religious discussions: it's pizza vs ice cream vs vegan treats or Bengali Watsis.

Proving pragmatically of course, that no one really believes we cannot choose between them.

So how can one decide if we are free or determined?

What are your EXPERIENCES telling you? Can you stop reading this and watch tv right now, if you want to? Of course!

Pragmatism works for me, even in philosophy.  Why worry about what is in PRINCIPLE unknowable?

Edited July 22, 2023 by mfbukowski

[Stargazer]

18 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

So how can one decide if we are free or determined?

It is obvious. If we were determined we would have no agency. Since you can decide to go watch TV or not (your analogy), you are not determined. Perhaps others around you are NPCs, but not you.

Unless, of course, God is just playing us like game pieces on a board. Which would be kind of weird, since God wouldn't need game pieces which could think in order to play a game. Cogito, ergo sum.

[CV75]

It seems to me that if God gave us agency, His knowledge could not possibly negate it (Moses 4: 3; D&C 29: 35-36).

[Benjamin McGuire]

56 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

Since you can decide to go watch TV or not (your analogy), you are not determined.

The challenge isn't that we seem to have agency, it is whether or not that agency is real and external to our perception. To explain this differently - you don't make the decision to both watch TV and not watch TV - you only make a decision to do one of the two. Whether or not you could go either way, you still only go one of those ways - and the question is whether or not the outcome of the choice is predetermined (effectively by the sum total of your experience and by your immediate external context). You may not know ahead of time which choice you will make, but that doesn't mean that the outcome is completely determined by pre-existing factors.

48 minutes ago, CV75 said:

It seems to me that if God gave us agency, His knowledge could not possibly negate it (Moses 4: 3; D&C 29: 35-36).

This isn't really the issue. We want to discuss the idea of agency, and unlimited choice - and as far as we are concerned, at least in our perception, we have real agency and are making choices. The question the OP presents isn't really the question we are concerned with. If our agency is limited, even if it seems to us to be unlimited, does this then put limits on the moral culpability we have for the decisions that we make. Or, as I suggested earlier, if God could change the circumstances in which we use our agency, and we would then make different choices, does some of the moral responsibility of our choices rest on God's choices in putting us in those circumstances and giving us those sets of experiences. This is not about the immediate here and now of the choice or our perception of it, it is about an omniscient God's placing us in circumstances in which our choices only seem to reflect agency to ourselves.

[InCognitus]

42 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Or, as I suggested earlier, if God could change the circumstances in which we use our agency, and we would then make different choices, does some of the moral responsibility of our choices rest on God's choices in putting us in those circumstances and giving us those sets of experiences. This is not about the immediate here and now of the choice or our perception of it, it is about an omniscient God's placing us in circumstances in which our choices only seem to reflect agency to ourselves.

In addition to what you say above, there is a limited degree to which we put ourselves into the circumstances where we can make our own choices as well (or it may seem that way to us).  We may not have had any say on when and where we were born on this planet (although I wouldn't even rule that out completely without knowing more about our pre-mortal life - and if we did have a say in when and where we would be born it could change this discussion significantly).  But given the starting out point of our lives here and the circumstances of our birth, we can begin to make some choices day by day that may provide to us either a smaller or larger range of choices in the future.  Like for the example of whether or not to watch TV, we may make the decision to never purchase a TV or never put ourselves in a position where we have the opportunity to watch TV (assuming we are born in a time and place where television even exists).  And we also need to take into account the impact of choices that others make on our lives (like our parents, friends, or even the drunk driver that runs a red light and drastically changes our life choices).  Perhaps God controls all of these things completely, or maybe he just sets it all in motion and lets things play out on their own for the most part, but occasionally steps in and makes a tweak here or there to push events into a particular direction.

[CV75]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The challenge isn't that we seem to have agency, it is whether or not that agency is real and external to our perception. To explain this differently - you don't make the decision to both watch TV and not watch TV - you only make a decision to do one of the two. Whether or not you could go either way, you still only go one of those ways - and the question is whether or not the outcome of the choice is predetermined (effectively by the sum total of your experience and by your immediate external context). You may not know ahead of time which choice you will make, but that doesn't mean that the outcome is completely determined by pre-existing factors.

This isn't really the issue. We want to discuss the idea of agency, and unlimited choice - and as far as we are concerned, at least in our perception, we have real agency and are making choices. The question the OP presents isn't really the question we are concerned with. If our agency is limited, even if it seems to us to be unlimited, does this then put limits on the moral culpability we have for the decisions that we make. Or, as I suggested earlier, if God could change the circumstances in which we use our agency, and we would then make different choices, does some of the moral responsibility of our choices rest on God's choices in putting us in those circumstances and giving us those sets of experiences. This is not about the immediate here and now of the choice or our perception of it, it is about an omniscient God's placing us in circumstances in which our choices only seem to reflect agency to ourselves.

It is a means of discovering the issue😊when the OP’s inspires a more preferred issue to discuss.

D&C 93: 30-31 indicates that agency and condemnation (or glory) go hand in hand, and that both operate within a particular sphere, indicating greater or lesser limits set by God (D&C 82: 3; Abraham 3: 19 – 28). So, my question becomes, does God define the circumstances within these limits? – and I would say no, or perhaps better put, the specific circumstances are irrelevant since whatever the circumstance in a fairly chaotic environment, the enticement toward light or darkness persists, and the Son reconciles all circumstances. I do think that God manages circumstantial intervention to preserve the sphere of agency each of us was given (probably the most fundamental example is in D&C 88, directing the power by which physical things are made and conserved), but not to change our agency or tendency to use those things or choose or reject light in the process.

[Stargazer]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Whether or not you could go either way, you still only go one of those ways - and the question is whether or not the outcome of the choice is predetermined (effectively by the sum total of your experience and by your immediate external context).

I have sometimes thought that one lifetime is nowhere near enough testing for exaltation.

I'm 71 years old now, and I've had a fair number of opportunities to choose one thing over another during that time. But not so many as others. I've had my stresses and strains, but nowhere near the stresses and strains which others have had. My late wife's father died somewhere and sometime in 1945 after the Soviets took him and his wife into forced labor in the Soviet Union. His wife eventually returned, but he did not. We don't know what happened to him, but given that a huge percentage of German forced laborers died during their captivity, we can guess. I ghost-wrote a book of my mother-in-law's experiences in the USSR. If you've ever read Solzhenizen's Gulag Archipelago you can kind of imagine what she experienced. Neither of them knew what would happen to their four little daughters (aged 4 to 10) all alone in a burned out town in what became part of Poland. Neither knew what would happen to each other. 

I have never been in that kind of position. My life has been blessed in so many ways over what my wife's parents experienced. In fact, I have been just fine the whole time. I've had some disappointments, but overall things have been very good. They were tested to destruction. I've been on a bed of rose petals in comparison. How can Heavenly Father consider me "tested and proven good" when I haven't had anything like the kind of experiences that they had? Or had to face the same kind of choices they had to face?

So I have sometimes entertained the theory that I must be tested on other worlds as well. Or maybe on this one! That's one argument for Seelenwanderung, or reincarnation. It would be kind of economical, in a way. Get put through the wringer in one incarnation, and a bed of rose petals in another one. Do you test well in adversity, but not in abundance? Maybe you aren't suitable for good times, and go off the rails.  How many lives would it take to be thoroughly tested?

But I expect that HF knows what he's doing. Either way I cool with it.

[CV75]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

I have sometimes thought that one lifetime is nowhere near enough testing for exaltation.

I'm 71 years old now, and I've had a fair number of opportunities to choose one thing over another during that time. But not so many as others. I've had my stresses and strains, but nowhere near the stresses and strains which others have had. My late wife's father died somewhere and sometime in 1945 after the Soviets took him and his wife into forced labor in the Soviet Union. His wife eventually returned, but he did not. We don't know what happened to him, but given that a huge percentage of German forced laborers died during their captivity, we can guess. I ghost-wrote a book of my mother-in-law's experiences in the USSR. If you've ever read Solzhenizen's Gulag Archipelago you can kind of imagine what she experienced. Neither of them knew what would happen to their four little daughters (aged 4 to 10) all alone in a burned out town in what became part of Poland. Neither knew what would happen to each other. 

I have never been in that kind of position. My life has been blessed in so many ways over what my wife's parents experienced. In fact, I have been just fine the whole time. I've had some disappointments, but overall things have been very good. They were tested to destruction. I've been on a bed of rose petals in comparison. How can Heavenly Father consider me "tested and proven good" when I haven't had anything like the kind of experiences that they had? Or had to face the same kind of choices they had to face?

So I have sometimes entertained the theory that I must be tested on other worlds as well. Or maybe on this one! That's one argument for Seelenwanderung, or reincarnation. It would be kind of economical, in a way. Get put through the wringer in one incarnation, and a bed of rose petals in another one. Do you test well in adversity, but not in abundance? Maybe you aren't suitable for good times, and go off the rails.  How many lives would it take to be thoroughly tested?

But I expect that HF knows what he's doing. Either way I cool with it.

An alternate hypothesis might be that God gives us the agency He knows we can handle, even negotiated beforehand, but not the unique circumstances in which we exercise it. From what I’ve seen, our circumstances are almost always affected by others’ agency and rarely altered by divine intervention. Every soul (by definition, a connected spirit and a body) in every circumstance has the baseline materials (a physical universe, times and bounds of habitation, etc.) upon which to act, the consequences of which actions being judged as condemnation or glory. So, if God knows that some will be physically destroyed in their circumstances while others flourish in theirs, our chosen action in any case brings us closer to or further from God's full glory. The only way we can fully succeed in glory is through a Savior and His Gospel. This would render one mortal lifetime enough to maximize the agency (talent) God measured and gave each child to start with. Every circumstance is swallowed up in Christ who recompenses us, but none of the agency. As Elder Maxwell taught, we render our wills to Him (not our agency). “Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father” (churchofjesuschrist.org)

Edited July 23, 2023 by CV75

[teddyaware]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

I have sometimes thought that one lifetime is nowhere near enough testing for exaltation.

I'm 71 years old now, and I've had a fair number of opportunities to choose one thing over another during that time. But not so many as others. I've had my stresses and strains, but nowhere near the stresses and strains which others have had. My late wife's father died somewhere and sometime in 1945 after the Soviets took him and his wife into forced labor in the Soviet Union. His wife eventually returned, but he did not. We don't know what happened to him, but given that a huge percentage of German forced laborers died during their captivity, we can guess. I ghost-wrote a book of my mother-in-law's experiences in the USSR. If you've ever read Solzhenizen's Gulag Archipelago you can kind of imagine what she experienced. Neither of them knew what would happen to their four little daughters (aged 4 to 10) all alone in a burned out town in what became part of Poland. Neither knew what would happen to each other. 

I have never been in that kind of position. My life has been blessed in so many ways over what my wife's parents experienced. In fact, I have been just fine the whole time. I've had some disappointments, but overall things have been very good. They were tested to destruction. I've been on a bed of rose petals in comparison. How can Heavenly Father consider me "tested and proven good" when I haven't had anything like the kind of experiences that they had? Or had to face the same kind of choices they had to face?

So I have sometimes entertained the theory that I must be tested on other worlds as well. Or maybe on this one! That's one argument for Seelenwanderung, or reincarnation. It would be kind of economical, in a way. Get put through the wringer in one incarnation, and a bed of rose petals in another one. Do you test well in adversity, but not in abundance? Maybe you aren't suitable for good times, and go off the rails.  How many lives would it take to be thoroughly tested?

But I expect that HF knows what he's doing. Either way I cool with it.

“When you climb up a ladder, you must begin at the bottom and ascend step by step, until you arrive at the top; and so it is with the principles of the Gospel– you must begin with the first, and go on until you learn all the principles of exaltation. But it will be a great while after you have passed through the veil before you will have learned them. It will be a great work to learn our salvation and exaltation even beyond the grave.” Joseph Smith, History of the Church, 6:306-307

[CV75]

1 hour ago, teddyaware said:

“When you climb up a ladder, you must begin at the bottom and ascend step by step, until you arrive at the top; and so it is with the principles of the Gospel– you must begin with the first, and go on until you learn all the principles of exaltation. But it will be a great while after you have passed through the veil before you will have learned them. It will be a great work to learn our salvation and exaltation even beyond the grave.” Joseph Smith, History of the Church, 6:306-307

I like that this refers to passing through the veil beyond the grave, both one-time events signifying just one mortal lifetime for probationary purposes. Abraham 3: 25 refers to this one probation, and 3: 26 refers to the subsequent work and learning adding of glory upon glory (i.e., principle upon principle).

[Benjamin McGuire]

3 hours ago, InCognitus said:

But given the starting out point of our lives here and the circumstances of our birth, we can begin to make some choices day by day that may provide to us either a smaller or larger range of choices in the future.

But this is just expressing the idea that our perception of choice is actual agency. The counter argument to that is that we don't really have two (or more) outcomes at any point in which we think we are making a choice - we would always choose the choice that we make when we encounter it in the way that we do.

4 hours ago, InCognitus said:

Like for the example of whether or not to watch TV, we may make the decision to never purchase a TV or never put ourselves in a position where we have the opportunity to watch TV (assuming we are born in a time and place where television even exists).

This doesn't make any sense in the context of this discussion. You are making an assumption that somehow the earlier decisions are somehow equally possible decisions - when that isn't necessarily the case. The later issues are all contingent on that first decision (which may have already been predetermined because it was also contingent on earlier decisions and/or external conditions over which you have no control). You are making the assumption that there are in fact decisions which you can make which are not already contingent. You haven't provided a reason for such an expectation.

4 hours ago, InCognitus said:

And we also need to take into account the impact of choices that others make on our lives (like our parents, friends, or even the drunk driver that runs a red light and drastically changes our life choices).

We don't actually need to take this into account. This is all external to our decision making process. If they do something that causes us to make a decision in a specific way, then this is simply evidence for an absence of true agency. And since we cannot discover the seeds of real agency in the actions of others, it becomes irrelevant to the question.

4 hours ago, InCognitus said:

Perhaps God controls all of these things completely, or maybe he just sets it all in motion and lets things play out on their own for the most part, but occasionally steps in and makes a tweak here or there to push events into a particular direction.

Again, this really doesn't matter - because the distinction doesn't resolve the issue or change the answer. In other words, we have no way of knowing whether or not God is merely making a tweak here or there, or whether he has set in motion a sequence of events which will not vary even the slightest from the path that God not only knows will happen, but that God set in motion in a way that would guarantee that it happened. We don't know whether or not we could have made a different choice - because we make the choices that we make. We would think that we had agency whether we really do, or do not. And it is the perception that we do which colors all of our thoughts about this question.

[teddyaware]

7 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

But this is just expressing the idea that our perception of choice is actual agency. The counter argument to that is that we don't really have two (or more) outcomes at any point in which we think we are making a choice - we would always choose the choice that we make when we encounter it in the way that we do.

This doesn't make any sense in the context of this discussion. You are making an assumption that somehow the earlier decisions are somehow equally possible decisions - when that isn't necessarily the case. The later issues are all contingent on that first decision (which may have already been predetermined because it was also contingent on earlier decisions and/or external conditions over which you have no control). You are making the assumption that there are in fact decisions which you can make which are not already contingent. You haven't provided a reason for such an expectation.

We don't actually need to take this into account. This is all external to our decision making process. If they do something that causes us to make a decision in a specific way, then this is simply evidence for an absence of true agency. And since we cannot discover the seeds of real agency in the actions of others, it becomes irrelevant to the question.

Again, this really doesn't matter - because the distinction doesn't resolve the issue or change the answer. In other words, we have no way of knowing whether or not God is merely making a tweak here or there, or whether he has set in motion a sequence of events which will not vary even the slightest from the path that God not only knows will happen, but that God set in motion in a way that would guarantee that it happened. We don't know whether or not we could have made a different choice - because we make the choices that we make. We would think that we had agency whether we really do, or do not. And it is the perception that we do which colors all of our thoughts about this question.

The Book of Mormon “solves the matter.” The “iron rod scripture” testifies that God cannot lie and that men most definitely have true freedom of choice, a precious right purchased for them through the infinite and eternal atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In order for your perceptions to have any legitimacy, God would have to be a liar and a deceiver. In other words, he’d actually have to be a devil disguising himself as an angel of light. The devil is the author or bondage, captivity, compulsion and illusory freedom, not God.

26 And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given.

27 Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself. (2 Nephi 2)

Edited July 24, 2023 by teddyaware

[Benjamin McGuire]

5 hours ago, teddyaware said:

The Book of Mormon “solves the matter.” The “iron rod scripture” testifies that God cannot lie and that men most definitely have true freedom of choice, a precious right purchased for them through the infinite and eternal atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In order for your perceptions to have any legitimacy, God would have to be a liar and a deceiver. In other words, he’d actually have to be a devil disguising himself as an angel of light. The devil is the author or bondage, captivity, compulsion and illusory freedom, not God.

I don't agree with you on several points. First, 2 Nephi 2 suggests that we are free only "according to the flesh" - there are limitations to our freedom. We only become true free agents after we are redeemed from the fall (only then are we in a position to act and not be acted upon). And, we are told, that even in this state of limited agency, we are given what is expedient for us in our probationary state. So we have limited agency. We cannot choose to do anything we want - there are huge limitations, both on what we can do, and what we can decide to do.

Second, we have the problem, that I keep pointing out, that the issue isn't so much about agency as it is about moral responsibility. After all, if we cannot distinguish between having real choice and having no real choice in any particular context, then it is pointless to worry about it - except for the issue of moral responsibility. Does God punish us for decisions and actions which are not made in the context of true agency. And here, the scriptures are much more clear - without meeting a certain set of preconditions, the Book of Mormon argues, we cannot be held accountable (morally responsible) for our actions (even if those actions are morally wrong in some way). Among other things, the Book of Mormon identifies classes of individuals who have no moral responsibility because they are incapable of exercising true agency. In particular, we deal with the issue of young children and those that are mentally incompetent. It is this last group which is really significant for this this discussion because we can argue that they do not have true freedom of choice in the sense that you are suggesting.

I want to point out that I think your interpretation is flawed. Here are the main points -

1: "The fulness of time" is not a reference to the mortal life and atonement of Jesus Christ, but to his second coming (when he brings with Him the beginning of the resurrection).

2: "because that they are redeemed from the fall" doesn't refer to the act of redemption by Jesus Christ, but that actual redemption from the fall for each person - which occurs when they are resurrected.

3: And this means that being able to act and not be acted upon is contingent upon our being resurrected, glorified beings. In mortality, we are, as Lehi notes, only "free according to the flesh." Some of us are more free than others in this context - and some of us bear, perhaps, more moral culpability than others.

And finally, just because you may disagree with how I interpret scripture does not, in fact, put me in the position of making God a liar. I don't believe in a completely deterministic universe. But, I also do not believe that we have this absolute free agency in mortality, nor do I believe that God has ever suggested that we do.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[Stargazer]

14 hours ago, CV75 said:

An alternate hypothesis might be that God gives us the agency He knows we can handle, even negotiated beforehand, but not the unique circumstances in which we exercise it. From what I’ve seen, our circumstances are almost always affected by others’ agency and rarely altered by divine intervention. Every soul (by definition, a connected spirit and a body) in every circumstance has the baseline materials (a physical universe, times and bounds of habitation, etc.) upon which to act, the consequences of which actions being judged as condemnation or glory. So, if God knows that some will be physically destroyed in their circumstances while others flourish in theirs, our chosen action in any case brings us closer to or further from God's full glory. The only way we can fully succeed in glory is through a Savior and His Gospel. This would render one mortal lifetime enough to maximize the agency (talent) God measured and gave each child to start with. Every circumstance is swallowed up in Christ who recompenses us, but none of the agency. As Elder Maxwell taught, we render our wills to Him (not our agency). “Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father” (churchofjesuschrist.org)

Excellent answer! Thankyou!

[Stargazer]

I have to say that I have enjoyed and been edified by all the posters in this topic. There will always be differences of opinion on the matter, but since we are all seeing through a glass, darkly, we are equal to a degree. 

Lovely points of view, all around!  

[CV75]

Not sure who to reply to, but responding to the posts since last night:

I think when it comes to moral agency, there are but two choices. Two people in the same circumstance often make opposing moral choices – they may seem ambiguous to us, but God judges fairly. I’ve heard it said that God judges us according to our circumstances, but I think this is really meant to emphasize the principle that we mustn’t judge others when we misconstrue circumstances, which have been swallowed up in Christ, as relevant. He judges us according to our moral choices, knowing the sphere of agency, great or small according to our intelligence, that He gave us in the first place. We must have charity no matter our perceived differences in circumstance (King Benjamin).

Given how we process any given circumstance, we are often unaware of it, and when we are, it is often after we create it ourselves (self-talk, narratives), including creating a circumstance within a circumstance to cope with or exploit (for good or evil) the emerging circumstance or the emerging awareness of it. And in every case these circumstances do not occur in a vacuum -- others’ actions affect our circumstances, and our actions affect theirs. This gets back to the idea that moral choice is still made within a sphere that is independent of any given circumstance -- beyond the characteristics of the second estate -- we can construct or that gets imposed upon us.

So, someone born into what seem to be tragic circumstances to us has been given the agency to handle them on a moral basis, and compassion should rule the day to help them in ways they cannot help themselves, as Christ does for us temporally and spiritually. In this way, we are making the moral choice to unite in God's work while the sufferer makes the same kind of moral choice.

[mfbukowski]

22 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The challenge isn't that we seem to have agency, it is whether or not that agency is real and external to our perception.

What if NOTHING we CAN know is "external to our perception", so for all practical purposes all we can know of reality IS human experience.  (including spiritual experience of course)!

That is Pragmatism and Phenomenology epistemology in 25 words or less, and why postmodernism works.  Truth is in the realm of the observer.

And so spiritual experience is as "real" as anything else for each individual.

 

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by mfbukowski

[Benjamin McGuire]

13 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

What if NOTHING we CAN know is "external to our perception", so for all practical purposes all we can know of reality IS human experience.  (including spiritual experience of course)!

I don't disagree with what you write.

The challenge I see is that when we fixate on the question of agency, we run into a problem of competing polarized points. On the one hand, we have the view where everything is subject to that agency. Everything we do, every choice we make, comes from within us. On the other end of the spectrum, it is all deterministic - there is no choice, only the mere illusion of choice. There isn't any way for us to distinguish between the two points, so we end up falling back on a variety of 'authoritative' voices to support our views.

Rather, I think, we should focus on the other part of this issue - the one that makes the question of agency significant: the issue of moral responsibility. Since I fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum between absolute agency and determinism, I think that it is important to recognize that for moral responsibility to occur, our actions and decisions must meet certain criteria. I think that for most of us (humanity), there are decisions we make and actions we take which do not meet those criteria, and for which we have no moral responsibility - and in LDS terms, the moral responsibility that could be incurred by these actions and decisions is resolved by the atonement.

[CV75]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I don't disagree with what you write.

The challenge I see is that when we fixate on the question of agency, we run into a problem of competing polarized points. On the one hand, we have the view where everything is subject to that agency. Everything we do, every choice we make, comes from within us. On the other end of the spectrum, it is all deterministic - there is no choice, only the mere illusion of choice. There isn't any way for us to distinguish between the two points, so we end up falling back on a variety of 'authoritative' voices to support our views.

Rather, I think, we should focus on the other part of this issue - the one that makes the question of agency significant: the issue of moral responsibility. Since I fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum between absolute agency and determinism, I think that it is important to recognize that for moral responsibility to occur, our actions and decisions must meet certain criteria. I think that for most of us (humanity), there are decisions we make and actions we take which do not meet those criteria, and for which we have no moral responsibility - and in LDS terms, the moral responsibility that could be incurred by these actions and decisions is resolved by the atonement.

I think that decisions and actions that do not meet the criteria for moral responsibility no more affect our eternal judgement than do accidents, mistakes, or other decisions made when moral law and accountability lie beyond our sphere. They have no moral impact and incur no moral responsibility; they are not sins, but the “inexplicable, infuriating unfairness*” of purely mortal (i.e., non-moral or “least-refined” material) law that stems directly from Adam’s transgression. These are resolved by the universal resurrection granted through the atonement of Christ.

* https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2021/04/25renlund?lang=eng, the paragraph beginning with, “Some unfairness cannot be explained…”

[Benjamin McGuire]

2 hours ago, CV75 said:

I think that decisions and actions that do not meet the criteria for moral responsibility no more affect our eternal judgement than do accidents, mistakes, or other decisions made when moral law and accountability lie beyond our sphere. They have no moral impact and incur no moral responsibility; they are not sins, but the “inexplicable, infuriating unfairness*” of purely mortal (i.e., non-moral or “least-refined” material) law that stems directly from Adam’s transgression. These are resolved by the universal resurrection granted through the atonement of Christ.

And we agree on this point.

[CV75]

27 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And we agree on this point.

I was wondering because the following phrase wasn’t clear to me – I added my clarification in brackets: “…for moral responsibility to occur, our actions and decisions must meet certain criteria [one of which is the possession of a commensurate level of moral agency].”