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timmah on 28 January 2013
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dsgrue3 said:
timmah said:
dsgrue3 said:
timmah said:

You're also making a faulty argument if indeed God lives outside the constraints of time. Faulty because your argument is posed from a perspective of living inside and being limited by the dimension of time, that perspective and its resulting argument could not apply to a being that is not constrained by time, which is your premise. If to God, time is beginning, in progreess, and finished all at the same time, looking ahead to see what you choose to do (from outside of time) does not by definition nullify the choice you made from your perpective inside the constraints of time, it simply observes that choice.

 

Time is not relevant in predeterminism. You have a certain path - a chain of events, order isn't relevant; only that the outcomes for each choice are known (which they would be in the case of omniscience). So, at best, you have the illusion of free will if there is an omniscient creator.

I'm not talking about predeterminism (where God decided what I would do before I did it), but pre-knowledge (God sees time as beginning, in progress, and ended, all at the same time).

As beings constrained by time, describing/understanding this is a lot like trying to describe/understand what the color spectrum would look like if our eyes could see all of it.

Omniscience implies predeterminism. Like I said, all outcomes are known. Order isn't relevant only outcome for each event/choice, doesn't matter what order they are in. And don't give me any bullshit about an omniscient being not able to know what outcome is associated with what choice.

@your other point, makes no sense. Even if God "turns off" knowledge for a moment while you choose, the choice has already been pretedermined. Just because he turns off knowledge at that particular point in time doesn't mean you can change an outcome that has been known since the beginning of time.

I think you are misrepresenting omniscience or forming an entirely new definition.

Definition of OMNISCIENT (Merriam-Webster)

: having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight

: possessed of universal or complete knowledge

@happydolphin Yes, it is my fault. I'm opposed to responding to nonsense. It isn't worth my time.

Your conclusion is still related specifically to a perspective inside of space-time. This kind of discussion bares a lot of similarity to discussions in theoretical physics and how the 'flow' of time might work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabric_of_the_Cosmos

Part II: Time and Experience

Part II begins by addressing the issue that time is a very familiar concept, yet it is one of humanity's least understood concepts.

Chapter 5, "The Frozen River", deals with the question, "Does time flow?" One of the key points in this chapter deals with special relativity. Observers moving relative to each other have different conceptions of what exists at a given moment, and hence they have different conceptions of reality. The conclusion is that time does not flow, as all things simultaneously exist at the same time.

Pre-determination and pre-knowledge are two different doctrines on this topic as it applies to a belief in God. If you were to theorize a perspective outside of time, pre-knowledge does not necessarily have to imply pre-determination, though it would be difficult if not impossible for a mind constrained by time to fully grasp something like that. Given the 'frozen river' analogy above, would God pre-arrange all items in the frozen river (pre-determinism), or does he simply observe them (pre-knowledge)? Also, if he is outside of the constraints of time, what does a time describing word like 'pre' even mean to him?

EDIT: Ow, I just blew my own mind.