like how we only use 1-5-10% of our brain.

Urban legend.  Sounds good, though, doesn’t it?  We don’t know enough about how the brain works to be able to claim that, and it seems fishy on the face of it to me, unless the Invisible Pink Unicorn wants us to play advanced word games with Her after we die.

If our existence spreads byond time & into spirituality, & into the nature of the Trinity, our actions are of such little significance, that it doesn’t matter to what degree we choose them or not.  What matters is our identity beyond the realms we have the ability to understand.

End of rational discussion.

(zilch) our choices are already made, by God

Just to nitpick, the very existence of a being with infallible foreknowledge implies predetermination, but from that alone it doesn’t follow that that being is responsible for fixing the future.

If you add in the omnimax Christian god that created the world, you can sum up our existence as a farce.

Just to nitpick, the very existence of a being with infallible foreknowledge implies predetermination, but from that alone it doesn’t follow that that being is responsible for fixing the future.

Okay, I’m nissig.  And pickig. I assumed, without so stating, that the being with perfect foresight was one and the same as the omnipotent creator of all, which does imply that

you can sum up our existence as a farce.

I think that’s only a small part of it, like how we only use 1-5-10% of our brain.

Since everyone else is nitpicking…

This is a fallacy that has been passed down through the ages.  We actually use almost 100% of our brain, we just don’t use it all at the same time.

I suppose you could throw in dimensions of space and time that man cannot comprehend in order to make god relevant but that just strengthens my feelings that it impossible to know whether or not god(s) exists and only serves to add an additional hurdle to overcome.

I think that’s only a small part of it, like how we only use 1-5-10% of our brain.

I third the motion that the above claim is one of those wierd beliefs that have no grounding.  I did my first degree specializing in neuro-biology.  During that time I participated in numerous studies and lab assignments that involved measuring the neuronal activity, and I can assure you that the brain is lit up like a Christmas tree.  Our brains are pretty much all active all the time.  There’s always background neuronal noise.  There’s very little in your brain that isn’t constantly doing something.

Okay, I took that example from what Isaw in “Phenomenon” & what my cousin (who has completed medical school & is in resendency for psychiatry) told me about how little they know of how the brain functions.  Let’s change it to how little we know of the universe.  I still wonder what you think of the idea that our actions (free or chosen) play only the most minor part in our identity, or do you think they ARE our identity?

ellie,

I agree that the brain is the last frontier for biology.  We don’t understand how or why most of it works the way it does.  However, that isn’t to say that we know nothing about it.  We know a fair bit, it’s just that our knowledge about it isn’t as solid as our knowledge about other organs.

All the above aside, measuring neural activity is actually one of the easier things to do.  This is for several reasons, first much of the activity is electrical in nature, which is very easy to record.  Second, the brain is a metabolic hog, it burns huge amounts of oxygen, this makes it easy to scan in real time with P.E.T. and fMRI. 

As for the connection between action and identity I have no idea where to start.  I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking.

the brain is a metabolic hog

Pig, you would know…

But it tastes like nothing else you’ve ever eaten

(huffing, puffing, out of breath...) Sorry I’m late!  I first saw this thread early in the week and thought, “I’ll have to look at that in more detail after work” but then things got busy and next thing you know there’s dozens of interesting comments.  Too many to respond to individually, but I just read each one.

When my dad died, I was executor and had the painful duty of sorting through his stuff.  In his wallet I found a quote: “When you look at any object closely enough, you will find it is connected to every other object in the universe.” (Or words to that effect)

I also found it in his address book, and again in the notes for a novel he had been writing.

In the strictly physical sense, this is true: every object that has mass has gravity that affects other objects at the far reaches of the universe.  It is true chemically, and in the diversions any object places on electromagnetic energy passing through it.  It is true sequentially, as the object’s matter is a set of atoms that will be members of other sets past and future.

Events are connected, in a butterfly-effect way.  The bible says that the sins of the father are visited on the sons and the son’s sons to the seventh generation.  One could try to extrapolate something about the nature of God from that bit of ancient tradition, but it is probably about right in that people’s lives are profoundly affected by their parents’ quirks and faults; and so they affect their own children’s lives. 

I envision it as the decay of some radioactive isotope, reducing by half with each generation until no detectable trace remains.  But some isotopes are stable and so pass undiminished from generation to generation.  These we come to think of as “normal” human behavior.

One of the reasons I put off engaging this thread was that the topics are more abstract than I normally go.  Just as (when opening a new issue of Scientific American) I am more likely to read the article about quantum tunneling effects in OLEDS than the one about how the universe might actually be fifty dimensions intersecting in some way. 

So it is with the illusion of free will and the nature of God and Satan.  From inside my BIpV (Brain In portable Vat) there’s no way I’ll ever answer the one about free will, and the confidence with which people speak about what God “meant” by this or that… just amazes me.

Actually the idea of our universe as some kind of super-Sim game running on a gigantic quantum computer is credible to me.  But regardless, we’ll never know if that is the case. 

I wish my father were here to explain why that quote was so meaningful to him…

decrepitoldfool: Very well said. I’m curious as to the origin of that quote.

Would it be possible for you to quote it verbatim?

Would it be possible for you to quote it verbatim? - Etan

That was 13 years ago and I put the quote in a nice safe place in my library where I would be sure not to lose it - among 4,000 books, back issues of the 25-odd periodicals I subscribe to, and probably an old Buick hidden in there somewhere… Sure enough I cannot find it now. 

Whitman (anticipating by a century the popularization of fractals as a model for existence) said that the universe is contained in a blade of grass, but something tells me the quote was from Thoreau.  I have a sketchy memory of underlining something and thinking; “Shit! There’s that quote dad carried around with him everywhere!” but now I can’t find my copy of Walden Pond either.

The persistence (and lack of persistence) of memory is something for Socialist Swine to explain - but since it (memory) is plainly held in the brain it is hard to for me to imagine how it (and the personality, the identity that is shaped by it) would have any existence beyond that brain. This was Francis Crick’s Astonishing Hypothesis that what we refer to as the “soul” is material in nature and does not survive discorporation. (I can’t find that book either!)

That memory is held in the brain was driven home for me by the accident I had this summer.  I don’t remember it.  When concussion occurs, there is a chemical chain-reaction as every neuron fires at once, involving glutamate, potassium, calcium, and then glucose like a miniature seizure. I know the accident happened from physical evidence, but no cognitive evidence remains - the tape is clean. 

It doesn’t look promising for an afterlife, or a personal existence after discorporation.

It doesn’t look promising for an afterlife, or a personal existence after discorporation.

In the interest of playing devil’s advocate I would like to note that Aquinas (or perhaps Augustine, but I think it was Aquinas) argued that sensation and memory are all aspects of the physical body.  The soul is pure rationality, as such in the afterlife, Aquinas held, that there would be no memory or sensation, only pure reason.  I have no idea how reason would work without sensation or memory, but then again I have no idea how it would be possible for three beings to be one distinguishable yet unified (and if I remember correctly neither could Thoreau nor his good friend Emerson).

Ok, let me take one more stab at this.  God, not being bound by time but having control over it, knows what choice I will make because I made it.  He knows my choices because he knows me and because I have already made them in a sense.  He still is omniscient and he never had to learn them because after all He has no creator and has all control over time.  God does not know my choices because they are predestined, he knows them because I have made them.

Theocrat - No need to clear things up.  I understood you just fine the first time around and based on your posts, it is absolutely clear to me that you have the illusion of free will.  Of course god would have to exist and all that jazz, but in your hypothetical example your god is omnimax therefore free will is an illusion.

Now can we move on to your 1984 question?

Originally posted by deadscot:
Now can we move on to your 1984 question?

Yes your free to move onto the question.  Socialist Swine was the only one I saw give any response so I thought you were done discussing.

deadscot: I actually do agree with the distinction that Theocrat made.

Knowing everything means he knows what will happen. There may actually be infinite possibilities but God just knows exactly how each will play out. This is very similar to what occurs in the novel Dune.

In Dune Paul Atreides (Maud’dib) gets the power of foresight. He can effectively see into the future and predict paths for his life. He realizes that there are pivotal moments in life that may have thousands of paths and other moments that only have one or two paths.

Theocrat seems to percieve of God as a Maud’dib like character. He percieves all infinite paths of life and therefore knows what will occur. However he is not forcing any specific path upon us. We just cannot surprise him with our decisions.

Very interesting perspective, Theocrat.

I still disagree.  While god does not compel someone to make a certain choice, he does know exactly what choice will be made leaving only the illusion of free will.

I would also argue that an omnimax being would be able to see the outcome of all the infinite choices whether they were chosen or not.  If this omnimax being only knows the outcome of the infinite choices but has no idea which path will be chosen, I would agree that free will exists.

In order to have absolute free will, god cannot have knowledge as to which choice will be made until it actually transpires.

Hmm I’m not making this very clear on my part.  I believe God knows what is going to happen.  Not infinite choices.  Just what is going to happen.  If you asked Him what would happen if you made another choice He could tell you, but I am not concerned with that.  Let’s say you watch a movie and write down the choices every character makes.  When you replay the movie you know what choice every character makes, but that does not affect the choice they make in the movie you just know what it is.  God knows what choices we make because we have made them.  He knows us and has seen us make them.  His knowledge of these choices though do not affect our ability to make them.  We made the choice first and now he knows about it, and knew about it.

What deadscot said.  Theo seems to be referring to a God who is omniscient, but not the omnipotent Creator.  I have no argument with the logic of this- He would be like the person watching the movie, knowing every choice every character makes, but not making those choices for them.

As soon as God is the omnipotent Creator, things change- He not only knows every choice; He made the choices Himself, being the Producer and Scriptwriter too.  The characters cannot make any choices themselves, if the Producer and Scriptwriter is truly omnipotent and omniscient.

We may think we are deciding ourselves, but given an omniscient and omnipotent Creator (leaving omnibenevolence out of the equation for the moment), God has already made every choice for us, by creating us in such a way that we would make exactly the foreseen choices we do.

theo said: God does not know my choices because they are predestined, he knows them because I have made them.

That’s what predestination means: already made, foreseen, inevitable.

etan said: He percieves all infinite paths of life and therefore knows what will occur. However he is not forcing any specific path upon us. We just cannot surprise him with our decisions.

What distinction are we talking about here?  If God deliberately creates us to make the decisions we make, and knows what those decisions will be, that sounds an awful lot like “forcing” to me, just as the actors are “forced” to stick to the script.  If they don’t, we’re not talking omniscient and omnipotent anymore.

Deadscot caught what I was trying to say. I thought Theocrat meant God could forsee all choices but no choices were determined. This would mean God is omniscient but not omnipotent.

Theocrat did not mean this but I still like this concept. If God knows what can happen but does not control it this would give us our will but leave one of his triple-o’s.

Predestination means already made, foreseen, inevitable by someone other than yourself.  If I have already made the choice than you could argue I have predestined myself to make that choice.  I’m not going to argue with that, but I just don’t believe God has predestined my choices.

Originally posted by zilch:
Theo seems to be referring to a God who is omniscient, but not the omnipotent Creator.  I have no argument with the logic of this- He would be like the person watching the movie, knowing every choice every character makes, but not making those choices for them.

I am referring to an omniscient and omnipotent God.  Your very argument contradicts itself.  If God is omnipotent than He must also have the ability to use His power at will.  He must have power over himself.  By saying He is not omnipotent because He does not always choose to control people does not work.  He wants sincere love not love that He could create a robot to give Himself.

theo said: but I just don’t believe God has predestined my choices.

Sorry, but I can’t see how you can not get it.  If God made you, knowing what every decision in your life would be, and made you in such a way that you would make those decisions, this stuff you say about God having power over Himself and choosing not to control people is meaningless.  He has already controlled them at the Creation by creating them in such a way that they would do as He already knows they will do- day to day control is superfluous.  If God is omnipotent and omniscient we are robots, and have no free will, no matter how it may seem to us.

I give up.  I don’t think He would be omnipotent if he could only create robots.

I give up.  I don’t think He would be omnipotent if he could only create robots.

Yep, this discussion went pretty much the way I expected it to. I’ve been in way too many of these and the same arguments come up every time. In essence it boils down to the simple fact that many believers have no problems with the obvious paradox an omniscient deity would cause the same way they have no problems with the paradox of a three-in-one being (father, son, holy spook) that is described in their religious texts. Whether they’re able to accept these paradoxes because they just don’t understand them or because they choose to just shrug their shoulders and say “yep, that’s a stumper, but I believe it to be true anyway” varies from person to person.

Some, like Theocrat here, try to solve the problem of an omniscient God by placing him “outside of time.” In that view, because God is not bound by time, he can know everything because he can be everywhere and everytime all at once. Therefore the argument goes that he’s not making decisions for us, but merely able to see our entire lives as a complete event and thusly all-knowing. Presto! Paradox solved. Well, not quite. This view makes a number of assumptions and actually ends up raising more questions than it answers.

Theocrat’s frustration is understandable as this debate has been ongoing between Theists and Philosophers for eons and part of the problem is one of definitions. For example, what exactly does Theocrat mean when he claims that God is omnipotent? Does it mean the same thing as when DeadScot uses it? What about Predestination? Free will? Chances are the definitions in mind vary from person to person and that’s the first hurdle that has to be overcome.

Let’s start with the definition of omniscience. There’s a Wikipedia entry that gives a pretty good summary of omniscience that includes the debate over its compatibility with the concept of Free Will and offers the four most common Theistic explanations including Theocrat’s “God stands outside of time” point of view. It also includes links to entries dealing with the definitions of many of the other words being used here and the related arguments.

The problem between omniscience and free will as seen by many people here, including myself, is known as Theological Fatalism. That argument is as follows:

1. God is omniscient.
2. Since God is omniscient, God has infallible foreknowledge.
3. If God has infallible foreknowledge that tomorrow you will engage in event X, then you must invariably engage in event X.
4. You must invariably engage in event X.

Therefore, free-will is not possible since you have no alternative except to engage in event X. In the event that you do not fulfill event X, then God is not omniscient. Alternatively, if you engage in event X, then you no free-will on account of the inability to choose another alternative.

This is the predestination that Elwed tried to illustrate and which Theocrat tried to rebut without realizing that he’s already effectively argued against himself with some of his replies. The simple fact is that pretty much every variant of Christianity has some element of predestination involved in its beliefs that varies from weak to strong depending on the sect in question (with Calvinism being the strongest).Theocrat’s argument that God’s position as a special observer outside of time in no way eliminates the problem of predestination if God is truly omniscient and has his own free will because the very act of Creation with foreknowledge is a form of predestination. The basic argument is as follows:

If God foreknows what will happen to creatures - at a minimum, knows what will happen to them as categories of creatures, among which particular individuals will certainly exist - and decides to create, then the act of creation predestines every category of creature that is foreknown by God, to the end He foresaw.

As a rough illustration, if God foresaw that herbivores would be the food of carnivores, and regardless of whether he would prefer a different state of affairs, decides to create knowing what will be brought to pass subsequently: then, herbivores are predestined to be the only food of carnivores, by the prior decision of God; and without that food, carnivores are predestined to perish. This scenario illustrates predestination at the weakest end of the spectrum. Varieties of predestination based on foreknowledge are considered stronger, the more particularly God foreknows the future and the more continually He acts; but, no matter how complicated, the basic idea is the same. God makes a free choice between not acting, and acting knowing what will happen as a result. By acting, he predestinates, because he foreknows not only the possible but the actual future state of affairs that his acts make possible.—Wikipedia entry for Predestination

Theocrat’s replies to date have illustrated that he believes God foreknows every single thing he’s ever going to do down to a trivial level including: “God did know I was going to post a response to Swine’s entry.” He also has stated that he believes he can’t violate God’s foreknowledge: “No its not possible for me to eat in if God knows I’m going to eat out.” Additionally, Theocrat has made it clear God had this knowledge long before he got around to creating Theocrat himself. Therefor the fact that Theocrat exists and God knows every decision he will ever make means that Theocrat’s entire existence is predestined by the act of his creation regardless of God’s special observer status. Moving God outside of time wouldn’t change the fact that God knew prior to his Creation what he was about to bring into existence and decided that the course of events as he knew them to play out would be a perfectly acceptable outcome as far as he was concerned. The act of Creation is itself predestination with an omniscient God.

Which brings us back to the question I asked earlier: If God already knew before he made the universe where each person would end up, Heaven or Hell, once it’s all said and done then what’s the point of going through the motions? By Theocrat’s own admission, we can’t avoid Hell if God already knows we’ll end up there any more than the protagonist in a movie has any choice in changing how the movie ends. So there’s no logical reason to let the farce play out other then perhaps entertainment value. God could just divide us up into naughty and nice and get on with the business of basking in the love from those who made the cut for the rest of eternity.