Mind-blow: Our choices are not pre-determined, but God knows

[Aielyn]

happydolphin said:

Aielyn said:
This is where you lose pretty much every atheist and agnostic. Logic isn't something that you can just "not require" when it's inconvenient. What you are effectively saying is "God doesn't make sense... but it's OK, because he doesn't have to".

Logic is how one converts facts into knowledge. It allows you to identify inconsistencies. It isn't just a theory, and it isn't restricted in its application.

What you are basically doing is poorly rationalising the fact that you have two beliefs that are inconsistent with each other, because if either one were false, it would topple your entire belief system. Stop and think about it - two of the foundations of your entire belief structure cannot possibly both be true simultaneously. This doesn't mean that most of your belief structure is wrong, it just means that you might need to reconsider your beliefs slightly to address the inconsistency.

You're usually so smart. Did you read the thread?

I didn't read the whole thing, because I saw how the debate was going, and felt that, if someone had made a relevant point that mattered, I'd have seen a comment about it on skimming.

I went back and read all of your posts, particularly (at least, all of them up to a point), and I saw nothing that challenges what I said. You dismiss logic - you can use fancy phrases like "pre-supposed logic", but it comes down to exactly the same problem.

Let me address a specific point that you made - if god can have foreknowledge of an event happening, then that even must necessarily have been pre-determined. Otherwise, it would be possible for the event to not occur, and thus the foreknowledge to be wrong. So you have four choices if we assume that god exists:

1. There is no such thing as foreknowledge. (no omniscience)

2. Everything is predetermined. (no free will)

3. God gets it wrong sometimes. (no infallibility)

4. God intentionally ignores his own foreknowledge (willful ignorance)

Personally, if I were a religious person, I wouldn't like any of those possibilities.