We seem to be going in circles here. I've already addressed this issue.
The problem is that you miss the significance of my answers.
I think that the problem is that you overestimate the significance of your answers. You are still stuck in a logical contradiction, because you have imagined an omniscient, omnipotent being that tries to create beings with free will. The problem is that such a being cannot logically create beings with free will because it knows what all of their choices will be in advance. At best, it can only create beings that have the illusion of free choice in that they do not themselves know the future that God knows. In your attempt to explain why God doesn't make himself obvious to all, you paint a picture of a God that tries to leave enough clues around so that its minions can guess its existence but not know its existence, thinking that this somehow magically creates a condition of free will. But, as Cogito has so succinctly pointed out, there can be no compromise. Either God provides each of us with sufficient evidence or he doesn't. Your problem is that God
necesscarily knows how much evidence is sufficient. He cannot fail to know it.
I fail to see why it would matter either to God or humans that we tailored our actions out of certain knowledge that God existed. After all, we are supposed to believe that he exists.
But we're also supposed to feel free to act. If God reveals His presence like the cop on the highway, then we don't feel that way. God is the eight hundred pound gorilla. Making His presence too obvious would necessarily make people feel too constrained. A person who doesn't think he is really making a free choice cannot be considered particularly praiseworthy for making the right choice. Obsequiousness is not the same as love.
You keep ignoring the plight of the victims of evildoers. This is not just about speeders, but rapists, murderers, child molesters, thieves, torturers, and others who victimize innocent people. Is it unfair to potential victims that a cop stops the criminal before he can complete his crime? I think not. It may seem unfair to the criminal, but so what? And there is still no free will, because humans can only select a single option from God's point of view. There is no potential choice to deviate from the path that an omniscient being foresees. You cannot escape the illogic of your position, no matter how many times you ignore or deny it.
If we don't believe, then somehow that will displease God, although I can't imagine why it would.
Because it means we are ignoring or discounting the evidence rationally pointing to His existence, and in turn means we fail to freely choose to love Him.
Nonsense. We don't really choose to love people that we don't know. It happens as we come to know them. If we can't know God, then we can't really love him. You may have convinced yourself that you know God, but I (along with hundreds of millions of others) certainly don't. And I don't really know why you would want to love such a being anyway, given that he behaves so capriciously. He creates people that he knows will not make the choices he wants them to make, and he condemns them (not himself) for their behavior. That is not the behavior of a praiseworthy being.
And we are supposed to modify our behavior because we strongly suspect that he exists.
No, because we believe He exists.
That's exactly what I meant, but I am perfectly happy to substitute "strongly suspect" with "believe". Here, at least, you appear to absolve atheists from any obligation to love God, because atheists do not believe that any gods exist, let alone yours. Is that not a reasonable inference to draw?
The crazy part to me is that this is somehow better than modifying our behavior because we know that he exists.
Again, if His presence is so obvious that His existence cannot be doubted (except perhaps, by a lunatic), then the pressure to do the right thing is too great for humans to feel like they are making free choices.
Again, your position is logically untenable. Whether or not a human knows that his choices are free, God still knows exactly what those choices will be. So the human can only experience the illusion of free choice. God has to know that there is only one choice that can be made, however much he might wish that another might be made.
See, the problem is . . . I really don't understand how you are having such trouble grasping this, except that you have your atheistic blinders on. Perhaps we could take a poll, and see if the Christians on this board are having any trouble grasping what I am saying. I know how that will turn out.
Do you? Then what is the point of taking such a poll? It makes no more sense than your pretense that humans can make different choices than you imagined God knows they will make. I'm not the one with the blinders on. You are. You can't even see the contradiction in your position.
We are always constrained by our circumstances, which God created.
Actually, that's not necessarily so, depending on God's relationship to time. At most, He actualized our free choices, which means, while He may have been involved in creating the circumstances, we set the direction of that creation.
It is necessarily so. Whether God chooses to manifest himself as a part of our circumstances or not, we are always constrained by our circumstances. The moment you acknowledge God's omniscience, you are bound to the logic of a being that only sees Hobson's choices in our future. God is inherently incapable of being surprised by the choices we will make. You have produced no train of logic that will let your god escape this dilemma. You certainly haven't shown how "God's relationship to time" could solve the problem, and you also clearly conceive of your god as a being that lives in his own subjective time sequence, even if it is somehow orthogonal to ours.
I'm not saying the rape victim should take any solace in that. The criminal's possession of freedom2 doesn't make the rape any less horrible. In fact, it makes it more horrible. But the blame lies at the feet of the criminal, not God.
Nonsense. It is fully within God's power to stop the criminal before the crime is committed, but he chooses not to because of some unfathomable 'higher purpose'. I believe that you have acknowledged this point several times now. It cannot be because God needs the criminal to commit an act in order to know that he will do so, because God's omniscience guarantees that knowledge
before the criminal acts.
So that an omnipotent god would be able to discover the choice that he knew the sinner would make in the first place? This is absurd.
God has assumed the unenviable task of raising a race of mature, free willed idividuals, who have freely (both freedom1 and freedom2) chosen to love Him and be creatures of good character. Given the free choices of humans, that task inevitably results in bad things happening.
But God cannot logically confer free choices on beings whose every future action is known in advance. That's simply impossible. As impossible as creating a square circle. And please don't ask us to feel sympathy for God's "burdens". Omnipotent beings cannot experience burdens. If they could, they wouldn't be omnipotent.
But we do have free choice. We have, not only freedom2 (albeit not absolutely), but also freedom1. Freedom1 means we have genuine choices. That God knows ahead of time which we will choose does not mean we weren't free to choose. That is part of the ongoing debate in the omniscience thread in the other forum, which I have continued to press and the latest of which you have not responded to. So, I am not going to let you get away with characterizing your view on that matter as a fait accompli.
First of all, the thread has been double-posted and hopelessly confused. At the moment, this is the active thread. I have answered your points many times over in the past, and I will continue to answer it consistently even though you now seem intent on pushing by on argumentum ad nauseam. You have explicitly admitted that nobody really has "freedom2", since our choices are always constrained by a myriad of circumstances. And "freedom1", which is what most of us mean by the "free will" in the "free will defense", is simply impossible from the perspective of an omniscient being. You seem to have talked yourself into believing that there is a way out of the dilemma, but you only dig yourself further into your mental hole.
Ah. The gun is out there, but it's not really that close to our heads. And this is a comforting thought to you? 
So I'm getting this image of a sinner, not really sure that God exists, feeling a little naughty, seeing an opportunity to do something bad, and he grabs that opportunity. Then God jumps out from behind a cloud, shouts "Gotcha! You guessed wrong!", and plugs him right between the eyes. On the other hand, the pious sinner, really sure that God exists, feeling a little naughty, seeing an opportunity to do something bad, and he passes it up. God smiles down at him and says "You guessed correctly! I'll see YOU in heaven!" Laughing I think I'm finally beginning to understand this 'freedom2'.
You're not far off. But sinner1 and sinner2 live in the same world and therefore both have sufficient basis to believe. Sinner1 is therefore at fault in his failure to do so, and of course, in his consequent behavior.
Except that God, being omniscient, knows that sinner1 will not be convinced. That is, the evidence provided to sinner1 has not been sufficient to convince him, and God knows that fully well. Still, he shoots him dead.
You have presented us with a capricious craftsman of people who blames his creations for his own inability to make beings that will naturally make better choices--an inability that one would not expect to find in an omnipotent being.
But your metaphor doesn't work here. God is always in the room. He can't leave it without losing omniscience.
Which is exactly why He doesn't make His existence too obvious. Otherwise, freedom2 goes entirely out the window.
Do you honestly believe what you are saying? It matters not whether God makes his existence obvious. Whether he does or doesn't, he knows exactly what choices his creations will make at all times. Freedom2 was out the window from his perspective before he even started. Humans have as much freedom2 as the suspect in an interrogation room with a one-way mirror. He doesn't know that anyone is behind the mirror, but he has to assume that to be the case and act accordingly. So the concept of 'freedom2' that you've painted is illusory at best, and it does go "entirely out the window" in any practical sense.
We just don't know that he is there for certain. This gives us the illusion of 'freedom2' when we don't really have it at all.
See, you don't really understand freedom2. There is no such thing as having the illusion of freedom2. Freedom2 keys in on our perception. Freedom1 is a different matter, and on the other thread, I have been arguing how we really do have freedom1.
You need to recap your argument here. I don't know which one you are talking about. In any case, I think that we've established the illusory nature of so-called 'freedom2'.
and for some unfathomable reason that only God knows.
Now you've missed it. It is not difficult to understand why we get partial freedom2. I have articulated reasons above and in prior posts.
And I have articulated reasons above and in prior posts as to why your concept of 'freedom2' makes no sense. God either provides us with sufficient clues to believe in his existence or he doesn't. There is no middle ground, because his omniscience precludes it. You keep insisting that there is a middle ground, but you never actually seem to grasp how completely omniscience trumps your argument every time. That's why I said that God's reasons are 'unfathomable'. He simply has no power to confer free will on beings whose every choice is known to him in advance. So it makes no sense that he try to do what is logically impossible for him to do.
What I find unfathomable is how you think that this allows us to "choose" to love him. It can only be an illusory choice from God's perspective, since he supposedly knew exactly what choices we would make before he even created us.
Before? It is not necessarily "before" from God's perspective, though, right? Regardless, we made our choices freely (freedom1). God's knowledge ahead of time does not change that.
No, it is necessarily 'before' from God's perspective. Not necessarily from ours. We've been through this before. You conceive of God as behaving in sequential manner. He thinks. He plans. He makes decisions. These concepts are inherently temporal in nature, and no amount of argument can change the temporal aspects of their meanings. And his perfect knowledge of our future choices does change the nature of our freedom, since we cannot choose to behave differently from his knowledge of how we will behave. Again, you don't seem to understand the way in which omniscience precludes freedom of choice from God's perspective. He cannot logically create beings that are free to choose to behave differently than he knows they will behave.
You think that because he partially conceals his existence from us that we are somehow free to surprise him with our behavior? Does he have an infinite capacity to fool himself?
That depends on God's relationship to time, a topic argued in that other thread. Surprise for God is not necessarily a prerequisite to our having free will, however.
But I explained in that other thread the same thing that I've been explaining here. God must behave sequentially in order to carry out actions that are inherently sequential in nature. You just choose to argue your same position ad nauseam without addressing its illogic. You keep thinking that there is some way to wave your hands and make our words suddenly not mean what they mean.
From God's perspective, we can't choose anything.
Talk about begging the question. But you're equivocating freedom1 and freedom2. I went to the trouble to explain them, so you really have no excuse for being confused.
I am absolutely not equivocating the two senses of 'freedom', neither of which can exist from the perspective of an omniscient being. It would only be question-begging if God were not omniscient. That's the problem that you cannot acknowledge. WE feel that we have the freedom to make different choices. God knows that we can only make the choices that he knows we will make. He knows whether or not the 'clues' he provides us to guess his existence will work or fail to work. So he can only be deceiving himself if he thinks that this somehow gives us the freedom to behave differently. He has no grounds for being disappointed or hoping for a different outcome in our behavior. He's OMNISCIENT.
For an omnipotent being, nothing at all can be "difficult" to achieve. He cannot fail to get what he wants. He cannot be disappointed or experience frustration, since no barrier can stand between him and success. No force can oppose him. Nor can he choose to lose his omnipotence, since he would no longer be omnipotent if he did. These are only logical conclusions, given the meaning of words like "omnipotent" and "all-powerful". If you think that God has the potential to fail here, then you have landed squarely in the middle of a contradiction.
"Difficult" in the sense that God's options are limited. Giving creatures freedom1 necessarily entails refraining from exercising some of His own omnipotence. That means He can experience frustration and disappointment because free-willed individuals are given lattitude to succeed or fail.
Did you not read what I wrote and what you quoted me as writing? God's options cannot be limited except by logic. An omnipotent being has no logical power to cease to be omnipotent. He cannot "refrain" from being in control at all times. If a driver decided to take his hands off the wheel and let his car drive over a pedestrian, a court would not set him free on the grounds that he wasn't actually driving when the pedestrian got killed. His defence lawyer might choose to make that argument, but a judge and jury would have to be criminally stupid to accept such an argument. It would be nonsensical to put the car in jail. Your special pleading on God's behalf is equivalent to that kind of argument. God knows exactly how his "free-willed" individuals will behave, so they have no more latitude to behave differently than the out-of-control car that runs over a pedestrian. Your best argument can only be that God took his hands off the wheel, and we both know that he made that choice of his own free will and in full knowledge that a pedestrian would be killed.
God cannot logically get us to choose to behave differently than he expects, because that is inherent in the definition of an omniscient being. Such a being must know how we will behave from the very beginning. He cannot be surprised by any turn of events. There are no ways that such a being can arrange to be surprised, because he would not be omniscent if he made such an arrangement.
Whether an omnisicient being can be surprised depends on His relationship to time. That's an argument on the other thread, if you ever get back to it.
Regardless, it may be that achieving His overall goal means intermediate events cannot occur in a completely satisfactory manner.
No, an omniscient being cannot be surprised unless he doesn't actually know the future. In that case, he would not be OMNISCIENT! You can't seem to help but contradict yourself at every turn. If God's goal is to confer free will on his creations, then he is out of luck unless he accepts the ignorance that would contradict his perfect knowledge. His creations feel that they have free will because, unlike God, they have no foreknowledge. They aren't omniscient!
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Topic: Cog/Cop omnipotence/omniscience discussion (Read 1271 times)