david@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Norris) (03/02/84)
[This line does not have free will]
Well, Laura asked me specifically what I made of her last article. Rather
than repeat her article, I'll try to summarize her points and respond to them.
Firstly, welcome back to the living. We had all thought you had been exiled
like Tim Maroney!
I have some problem with the "multiple universe" business. The question "If
Jesus was God, was He omniscient?" is a difficult question, and not altogether
unrelated to the topic at hand, but there is not much data on either side of
this argument. But we shouldn't commit a reductive error by assuming God is
within time because Jesus was, or that, because God interacts with man, he
*must* act within time. An unspoken premise of this argument is that God is
not Omnipotent. Which brings me to my next topic.
"If God can do anything, he can create a round square." This is silly. I
personally don't believe that God can do things which are mutally exclusive.
Laura's point (which is the same as Jon's and Darrell's) is that Omni/Free Will
all into the catagory of being mutually exclusive. But we all agree in this,
so the problem still remains of showing how Omniscience and Free Will are
mutually exclusive. Note that I'm pretty much in agreement up to this point.
But I think all we've done is to lay down a basis for discussion, and not
really *proved* anything yet.
Now Laura presents her most convincing argument, albeit still one of analogy.
I refer to the chemist/behaviourist who can predict what a person will do
before he does it. Of course, extending the argument Laura demonstrates that
such a theory, if true, obviates free will or even responsibility, since we
can't be responsible for the "chemical soup" we were born with. This is pretty
convincing, but, as Laura points out, something does seem wrong here.
Finally, Laura asks what is the difference between the chemist's "omniscience"
and God's omniscience, and here I must object. Carl Sagan demonstrates a good
example of this reductive fallacy when he asked if he was nothing more than
a collection of "billyuns and billyuns" of molecules, connected together.
Laura's error is that she attempts to extend the analogy to God. The chemist
denies the existance of the "'I' that did the raising," as Laura aptly put it
(the old word "soul" was often used). God, on the other hand, is concerned
chiefly with the soul. The chemist *predicts* future behaviour based on present
physical data. God *sees* future behaviour happening in His Unbounded Now (a
definitive term I'm using with Jon); not based on "soulish-data", as it were,
and in fact not "based" on anything. God doesn't "predict" that you will do
something; He sees you doing it. At any rate, the analogy quickly falls apart,
and we become guilty of the fallacy of extension ("knocking down strawmen").
But at last, Laura states:
"... by the fact that this was knowable my action becomes not-free.
Whatever God uses to make a prediction is a condition which constrains
me to behave in a not-free manner."
I'll complain first that Laura has constrained God within time ("make a
prediction"). But look closely at the statement. Re-worded, "God's omniscience
obviates man's free will." Doesn't this beg the question? Aren't you using
your conclusion as your premise? Isn't that what you are trying to demonstrate?
-- David Norris :-)
-- uw-beaver!ssc-vax!david
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (03/06/84)
Hello Dave, Guess what? You missed the 2 points of my argument that I was trying to present clearly, and got the stuff that I was worried was not very clear. This is depressing. It is difficult to argue when what you think is clear is obscure and what you find obscure your opponent finds clear. Oh well. Back to the drawing board. 1. God is in Time Proof: Assume God is not in Time. Therfore all temporal actions are closed to him. (Note: I am not here saying that God cannot be outside of Time and also inside Time, <though I may get to that later> as long as the "outside of Time" is a superset of "inside of Time", what I am saying is that God must be capable of being inside of Time. All forms of communication are temporal actions. You send bits of information, either from here to there (space -- and remember that we are living in space-time) and the information conveyed can be expressed in the change of states which must be measured with respect to time, since change is dx/dt: the measurement of dispacement in something with respect to time. Thus God, as assumed, not in Time cannot communicate his existence to us. BUT: By definition, all that exists must communicate its existence to us, or be capable of doing so. This is the only way we have of knowing that something exists -- by sensing its attempt to communicate with us. (This does not imply language. Chairs communicate their existence to us by being there are presenting sense impressions which are basic communication.) Thus, if God is incapable of communicating his existence to us, he *does not exist*. THEREFORE: If God exists, he must exist in Time. 2. Historical Perspective Accepting Christianity, you have a very concrete example of God communicating himself to us: Becoming a human being and walking around talking is pretty drastic stuff in the communication games. Thus if you want to say that God does not exist in Time you must renounce Christianity, something which I don't think that you (Dave) are willing to do. 3. Assuming God Exists, is he rational? I am already going to assume for te purpose of argument that God exists. Okay. Therefore when I say "Hey God, I am going to raise either my left hand or my right -- which one?" it is necessary to assume that it is possible for God to answer my question. (If not, this is a pretty feeble sort of omnipotence we have here.) Okay. Assume God shouts down "Right". Now I raise one hand. If I raise my left hand, then God has made a mistake. (God doesn't lie. That is for Smullyan!) But if God is omniscient, ten he cannot make mistakes. He cannot be wrong. Therefore *this can never happen*. Okay. So it is clear that I must raise my right hand. Now, the next question is: how does God know which hand I am going to raise? There are two main answers to this. The first goes: God knows me so well (say he looks into my soul) that he *knows* what I will do. Okay. Now, from perspective, it doesn't matter if God looks at my soul, at my brain-chemistry, or knows all of my past and sees how I have been conditioned to behave. The basic assumption, is that I have a reason for what I do and God can see the reason and thus predict what I do. At first glance, this doesn't seem too bad. After all, I generally assume that I have reasons for what I do. However, there is an important difference here. For example: If any of you were here watching me type this you would notice a curious fact. I am doing all the typing with my left hand. This curious fact becomes less curious when I explain to you that 20 minutes ago I tried to make myself a cup of coffee and overfilled the kettle, sothat when I picked it up to pour myself a cup it spilled onto my right hand and scalded me a bit. The old right hand is feeling rather tender right now, so I am not typing with it. This had direct bearing on which hand I raised -- I raised my right hand so that I could keep typing with my left. Okay. A human being could make the prediction that I would raise my right hand. He would have been right. (The important thing to remember is that he could have predicted that I would raise my left hand, perhaps to be difficult, and have been wrong, and nobody would have found it astonishing/impossible. It is God who is constrained to never be wrong (know a falsehood) not man.) Thus it is not unreasonable to assume that God could have made a similar prediction. HERE IS WHERE THE CRUNCH COMES: God, however, could have made that prediction 10,000 years ago. Thus, if God *knew* because he had a reason (including that he can "see" the future, a rather good reason, but my main consideration is that he can look into my brain/soul/past life (lives?) and thus predict th future perfectly) then all the events from the point where God could *know* what was going to happen (historically called "the Beginning of Time" since God was always all-knowing) must have arisen as they did soince otherwise God would be *wrong* and there must be a reason for my action which God can perceive. Therfore, the reason for my action cannot be my "free will" since the premise of free will is not that "had th conditions in my brain/soul/environment been different then i would be different" (called soft determinism, for those of you who like technical names) but that given the exact same conditions in my brain/soul/environment I could have done differently than I did. But then, God could not know what I would chose to do, because my free will would not be determined by anything that God can view -- God would have to answer "I don't know -- you will do whatever you will chose to do" which is counter to omniscience. * * * * Okay. Here is the oter answer to "how does God know?". We assume that Gpd does not know because he can view something and make reasoned conclusions about it. God is not reasonable. God just knows out of the essense of God. Okay, but this too invalidates free will. The essense of God becomes that which continually keeps the universe going "the universe is continually being created" sine teh determination of all activities flows out of God's being. Events could be entirely irrational and unreasonable (I could turn into a streetcar right now and fly to North Carolina) sine there is no constraint that says the universe *has* to be reasonable. (Just that, barring miracles, God has kept it pretty reasonable so far...). Again, though, I have no "free will". The past present and future flow out of God's being, not my free decisions. I lose either way. this business of "losing either way" is called fatalism. The first way (there are reasons for everythin I do, and no event is not caused by anoter prior event) is called determinism. The second way (everything is random) is not determinism, but is still fatalism. -- Laura Creighton utzoo!laura