I understand the question...and as a christian, often wondered the same thing, BUT, I DO NOT believe in this "free-will" that you allude too.

G.

I understand the question...and as a christian, often wondered the same thing, BUT, I DO NOT believe in this "free-will" that you allude too.

Then that solves that problem!

However, it does make the problem of evil quite a bit more difficult to answer.  

OTOH, if we do have free will in heaven, then eventually someone in heaven will sin, and once again the drama begins.

The archangel turned into Satan when he overreached God

How do you know that as a fact?

If I were in heaven, and I saw the God that created our universe, and I knew of his enormous power; I most likely would not rebel against such a powerful, supreme being who created me.

It is easier here on earth; however, because we tend to forget who God is. However, in heaven, we are constantly worshiping God.

Basically, you cannot state for a fact that everyone who goes to heaven is going to rebel against God.

Obviously, God is sending his faithful followers to heaven for a reason, and that reason being they followed him and sought to have a relationship with Him.

Cop,

On the one hand, I think you're right. Many Christians haven't thought about this, and those talking about free will don't take this into consideration. From what Matt has said, I'm not sure that he has plugged this factor into the equations.  That said, I think he's responding in the right direction:

"It is easier here on earth; however, because we tend to forget who God is. However, in heaven, we are constantly worshiping God."

More on this in a minute.

The other thing that is going on here is that Cogito is making a probability argument.  Is it really the case that given an infinite amount of time where a possible thing doesn't happen it is actually impossible?  Exceptions jump into my mind right now without a thought to what might be true in the afterlife.  I think Cogito could make his argument much better.  Perhaps he should turn it over to me.  

However, this area is known to the Christian community, though.  I would submit CS Lewis's 'The Great Divorce,' parts of his 'Screwtape Letters,' and even Narnia "Further up and further in!" as speaking within the vicinity of this topic.  I believe (but don't know for sure) that Augustine's 'The City of God' addresses it, too.  (that one is on my bookshelf for future reading).  That's a span of attention of some 1600 years.  However, we can take it right back to the apostle Paul in some measure, and this is where Matt is getting pretty warm:

"So will it be with the resurrection of the dead.  The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;  it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory;  it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;  it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."  1 Cor 15:42-44

And

"I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inhereit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.  Listen, I tell you a mystery:  We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed- in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet."  1 Cor 15:50-52

Matt is right in saying that we will have a much stronger focus on God, but perhaps more to the point it could be said that we will not experience the afterlife in the same manner as we experience this life.   If you send a 90 pound weakling in to lift up a 500 pound stone barring his exit from his cave, unassisted, he certainly will fail.   If you compel him, overwhelmingly, to try, you very likely will break him.   However, with assistance he may be able to- but what if he declines the assistance?  Shall he be forced to try, anyway?  But at some point the stone must be lifted.

However, if the weakling spends a significant time buffing himself up, doing pushups, etc, etc, preparing himself for the great heave, he might be able to deal with the stone.  In fact, it might be easy.

The analogy is not exact on a number of levels.  For the purpose of this thread, it should be seen that no manner of buffing oneself up is enough.  It is not the existing body that is strengthened:  the existing body is put to death, buried like a seed, and the resurrected plant has new abilities.

One shouldn't think that we experience the afterlife in the same manner we experience this life.

This discussion should also call attention to Cogito's woefully inadequate understanding of what Christians mean when they say 'resurrected.'  He continues to use the very weak and minimalistic view that is closer to 'resuscitation.'  Clearly, being raised 'imperishable' is not merely being resuscitated.

The other thing that is going on here is that Cogito is making a probability argument.

No. Just the opposite. Probabilities have relevance only in limited time frames. We're talking eternity here; thus, we're talking "possibilities," not probabilities. Given unlimited time, all possible events will take place. That is tautological.

Given enough time, the only events that will not occur are those events which are logical impossibilities.

"No. Just the opposite. Probabilities have relevance only in limited time frames. We're talking eternity here; thus, we're talking "possibilities," not probabilities. Given unlimited time, all possible events will take place. That is tautological.

Given enough time, the only events that will not occur are those events which are logical impossibilities."

I disagree, as obviously does Matt.  I disagree on the grounds that it is the death of knowledge.  I don't accept any argument that puts a bullet in the head of logic itself and then says that it is logical.  Sawing off the branch your sitting on is never a good idea.

But, I think it will be fun to play with your argument above.  Maybe I will.

""One shouldn't think that we experience the afterlife in the same manner we experience this life.""

"How precisely should one rationally think about that which no living human has ever experienced? Hmm? "

Well, for one thing, if you're going to make an argument derived from the Christian POV, then it would be rational to take into account all aspects of the Christian POV.  I provided some passages for you that illustrate that the Christian POV maintains that the nature of our existence once we have been resurrected is different than what we have now.  You can choose to ignore that, but all that means is that you're only arguing against a strawman.

It is not good form to take the assumptions of the position you're arguing from to make your argument, and then ditch the assumptions once they don't serve your purpose.

Secondly, obviously I don't think that it is the case that 'no living human' has experienced it.  I apply the same methodologies in that case as I do to other cases where a human has experienced something that I either never will, either because it is a singularity of history, or simply as a matter of pragmatics.

Or, do you linger at particle accelerators to watch them at work?  Do you not, in actuality, take their account of the results of their tests based on their authority?  Ah, but you trust their authority!  For good reason, we hope, right?  Well, if I think that I have good reason for trusting Jesus' authority, than I am only doing what all of us do already for vast swaths of things we call 'knowledge.'

"Explain, please, how the indisputable fact that,

Not indisputable- after all, here I am disputing it.

"This statement isn't probable BTW, it's logically true. I assume you realize that?"

A cursory reading of my post reveals that I am not at all convinced that it is logically true.  Essentially, any logical statement which undermines logic itself cannot be 'logically' true.   My idea of 'rationality' is that I don't kill 'rationality' itself on my way to making truth claims.

"Explain...how... given infinity, all possibilities will be realized equals the death of knowledge."

We'll have to take it in a few steps at a time, and I'm not sure my first approach will do it.  Here goes:

In a quantum thermodynamic system, particles remain in superposition until someone observes the system.   In such sets, it is observed that the the system moves towards equilibrium.  However, it is possible that the system may not move towards equilibrium.  The move towards equilibrium is a statistical reality based on the aggregation of quantum activity all moving towards entropy.  However, observation shows that a minisicule amount of energy, matter, what have you, do not immediately move towards entropy.

For example, if you unleash a bunch of perfume molecules in an otherwise empty room, the molecules will spread until they are at equally interspaced within the room.  This is the observed aggregate behavior of matter having the properties of gasses.  However, it is possible, and it is sometimes observed, that different parts of the room will have higher or lesser concentrations of the perfume molecules, at least temporarily.

That is called the fluctuation theorem, iirc.

You follow it this far?

"I'm not making an argument "derived from the Christian POV.""

You were asking Christians about being in heaven and being perfectly moral beings like God.  If not the Christian POV, which?  The Hindu?  Good grief.

"It is incumbent upon you either to demonstrate how we have acquired such knowledge or to admit that your ramblings about the afterlife are nothing more than sheer idealistic speculation."

Such a thing could only be known via revelation, eh?

Now, who are you talking to?  Hindus?  Or Christians?

"Please cite the evidence that leads you to conclude that a living person or persons have experienced the afterlife."

Ah!  A formal request to document arguments for the resurrection of Jesus.  :)  Well, I'd be glad to, in time.  Things on the forum are clearly heading that way.  However, you ought to recognize that it is in fact rational for me to consider something a piece of 'knowledge' if I think it comes from good authority.  That is perfectly consistent with the rest of how we live our lives.  I notice you said nothing about your observation of particle accelerators?  You do not observe, and cannot observe, 99.99% of all scientific experiments- most of them are in the past and so unobservable now- and yet you accept that they happened, presumably on the notion that there is proper authority there to justify your belief.

This is no different, and plays on the same principle.  Don't ask questions of Christians and their POV and then deny them the right to answer from their POV.

"How can a "logical" statement undermine logic?"

It can't.  Yours does.  Therefore it ain't logical.

"Maybe it's because you don't understand it"

No problem, there.

"and maybe that's because I haven't explained it clearly enough yet."

You certainly haven't presented it in a defensible way.

"I mean, if there is NO chance that a particular event will occur then that event is a logical impossibility, correct?"

You are equivocating between a priori and a posteriori in your presentation of what constitutes a 'logical impossibility.'  That is the heart of your problem.

"That's why I say that given infinity, if a Christian has a possibility to not praise God, then at some point he will elect not to praise God. If OTOH he never elects not to praise God, then he never had a real choice either to praise God or not to praise God."

That's pretty flawed, man.  Your analogy fails in that despite the extremely low probability of flipping a coin 20 times in a row on the first go, it is possible.  It is not a logical impossibility, just because it never happens.  It is a logical improbability, which is completely different.  However, there is a much more significant reason why your analogy fails, and that is that in the case of a coin, you are speaking towards a completely chance event based on the assumption of an 'honest' coin.  In otherwords, no intervention of any sort by an intelligent agent.

In the case of 'choosing to praise God,' it is not a 'chance event.'  The will is not governed by flips of a coin.  Certainly not if we are assuming the Christian POV, which you refuse to assume, even though your challenge is an attack on the Christian POV.  

Also, if the Christian POV is right, you will not have a will that is like our own.  Those who are raised will be raised imperishable, in power, with transformed bodies, and transformed and significantly strengthened wills.

If a 'choice' were nothing more than a 'chance' event, we might consider your argument a little more.  However, we can easily envision choices that are possible, but are not selected, ever.  These things do not become 'logically impossible' just because they are never chosen.

"Yes, and I can tell you now that this has nothing to do with what I am referring to. I am not making a reference to any experience or phenomenon in the universe."

You asked about the death of knowledge.  I'm telling you why.  You must not understand me yet.  But then, I've just begun to explain it.  So let's dig in a bit more...

"If OTOH, a possible event never occurs, even given infinite opportunity for it to occur, then in what sense can the event be said to have a capability of occurrence?"

If this is true, since the fluctuation theorem is well substantiated, and therefore possible, then it follows that since there is an infinite opportunity (switching now to YOUR POV), any fluctuation must happen, eventually.  Return again to your 20 coin flips in a row- same thing.   Its the same principle, however if you apply it to the real world, we now find that it will have some interesting implications on how we perceive the world, for our purposes here, for our epistemology.

Now, if you want to make the 20 'heads' in a row argument, its the same sort of situation as the fluctuation theorem- both use the same sort of statistics, but the fluctuation theorem has a much lower probability, I'd wager, than the 20 coin flips.  However, whether its a 1 in 10 to the 10th or a 1 in 10 to the 100th, given an infinite amount of time, according to you, any possible thing will eventually happen.

If follow this, I will explain why it impacts our epistemology.

"No, I wasn't. I was asking a human being (specifically, you) how he could know what a thing was like, that to the best of our knowledge no human being has ever experienced."

Not in your first post, fellah.  THAT's where you initiated the conversation.  I cited an example from your first post to illustrate who your audience was.  No surprise you ignored that.

"I'll hold my breath."

You may.

"What are you talking about? The beauty of science is that those same experiments can be replicated today and often are."

But not by you.  In a real sense, you never actually replicate the 'same experiment' at all.   Even if you replicate all of the conditions or what not, its not the same experiment, but a different experiment, witnessed by different people in different times in different places.  Even if you had the same results that you heard, you would still be taking the word of the others who performed the 'same' experiment about what the results were in their case.  

"Those experiments have been conducted in many different locations around the world by diverse groups of people."

Exactly- but you did not observe them or the results that they generated.  If you performed the same test and came to the same conclusions, that may only contribute to the credibility of their authority.  However, every experiment becomes quickly a matter of the historical record as soon as it is finished.  

Thus, even in science, you depend on the historical method in order to establish the credibility and authority of the folks telling you about the world.

"Few things could be less rational than to accept a first-century view of the natural world."

Given the fact that everything about the view of our natural world today will have to change once a GUT is discovered, I hardly think we can say we are in a much better position.  With the way that science 'self-corrects,' we can imagine that 2,000 years from now people might dismiss our own era's scientific explanation of the world.  So, I will step into the position of scientists 2,000 years from now and dismiss the rationality of your 21st century view of the natural world.  That dismissal is coming, so I may as well embrace it now.

"And you may not use the bible as an authority on anything about the natural world."

I don't recall positing that the after-life concerns the natural world.  There you go again, making arguments assuming the Christian POV and then ignoring them as it suits you.  

Or, do you think when 1 Cor 15 says "it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body' it is saying that the afterlife is experienced in the 'natural world.'

Similarly, as science is constrained to the natural world, we shouldn't consider it an authority on the supernatural world, should we?  And I don't.

"You may use authority opinion as a source of knowledge only if the opinion to which you appeal is a consensus opinion held by recognized experts in the relevant field to the point under discussion."

Yep, and that is why I appeal to the Resurrectionologists for my definition of the terms involved and for its study.  Not to you.    If I think I have good reason for trusting Jesus, then I am rational in accepting the results of his 'experiment.'

"No, no, no. Again, you've misunderstood entirely."

No, YOU'VE misunderstood entirely.  I too was talking about possibilities.

I'm not answering your question, mainly because you are asking the question of a person you know is a Christian but whom you will not allow to answer from the same presuppositions.  However, in a real sense, I've already answered it.  And in yet another way, the answer to your question is not relevant to the logic of your position.

It is the logic of your position which I have attacked, and as is consistent with a person completely engrossed in their own agenda, completely ignored by you.

A fluctuation such as I have described is also a matter of possibilities, too, and not merely 'chances.'  So, you have no reason for not addressing my quantum fluctuation example, unless you are ignorant about what is involved, in which case I will select a different example to show why your 'logic' is the death of logic, and therefore cannot be 'logical.'