Omni contradictions again...

[Herbiep]

According to semi, if I understand him correctly, god can use his
omnipotency to switch off his omniscience. It’s a bit like Superman
burning himself with his own heat vision.

As far as I can see this is the key feature of his god’s
characteristics. Otherwise his omniscience would mean that he could
not function since he knows how everything will turn out before
creation – after all he makes prophecies so we know that the future is
fixed and he knows how it will turn out.

How can a god who knows everything and can do anything have wants? If
he can’t switch off his omniscience and his omnipotency, anything he
wants will just come to be and he will always know this. Apparently he
wants us to love him, he wants us to use our free will to obey him but
he wants to avoid actually making us do what he wants like puppets he
just uses an elaborate reward and punishment system.

There is a problem with inventing a being that can do anything and
knows everything but that has wants. What Christmas present (and
birthday all in one) can you get for a god that has everything? He has
to be able to forget that he can have anything and things arranged any
way at any point in time with any set of circumstances leading up to
it that he ‘wants’ otherwise there will be no surprises for him.

[Tim]

Because he made us special. You could not feel his glory if you did
not know that you were born a sinner. He needs black to compare white,
dark to have light. He gave us free-will so he could have Christmas
any day some new sinner chooses to love him more than anything.

Realistically, we should pray and preach to our children until they
are eight years of age then kill them if they choose to stay sinners
instead of following the overlord's wishes. That way the ignorant
little bastards go to heaven and the little men left on the checker
board give him the gift of superior love everyday. The little whore
women and slaves are insignificant, he didn't give them free-will.

[Joe]

I don't necessarily agree with semi, but it is by no means certain,
just because God wills it, that any particular person will be saved.
There is still the matter of free will. God allows Himself to be
disappointed, too. Love, is worth it.

On Feb 4, 4:51 am, Herbiep <jackiestann...@googlemail.com> wrote:

[Joe]

Very sad.

[Tim]

It is sad. But it is the reality in which these religions historically
came from.
Humans started as beasts and progressed forward in intelligence to
change their beliefs as they became falsehoods to their intelligence.
They even had to rewrite what they claimed was written by their grand
master. OT NT.

When you say that "God allows himself to be disappointed too" Of
coarse he does "when you can have anything that you want at Alice's
restaurant."
Just a little reality check.

[Joe]

On Feb 6, 1:56 am, Tim <thcus...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> It is sad. But it is the reality in which these religions historically
> came from.

No, it is your weird sarcastic view, a caricature of the reality you
mock.

> Humans started as beasts and progressed forward in intelligence to
> change their beliefs as they became falsehoods to their intelligence.

Self-contradictory. Beasts do not hold beliefs.

> They even had to rewrite what they claimed was written by their grand
> master. OT NT.
>

Too high of a fallacy concentration for lucid comment.

> When you say that "God allows himself to be disappointed too" Of
> coarse he does "when you can have anything that you want at Alice's
> restaurant."
> Just a little reality check.
>

From one who doesn't know reality. I'll pass.

[jetbase]

I'm not sure if it will help me to better understand where you're
coming from, but can I ask what you think the effect of theoretically
removing the concept of time will have on free will?

[Herbiep]

I haven't suggested

" ...theoretically removing the concept of time..."

However if time was an irrelevance to god, that is for god there is no
arrow of time and his knowledge is not limited by a particular
location in spacetime, then his omniscience means that he knows
everything throughout time, past present and future. This would
contradict free will (in some forms) since he knows the outcome of all
decisions and did so before he made the creature making the decision.
Likewise a god that knows everything also knows what he himself will
do throughout time. He doesn't really have 'freewill' himself or
omnipotency since he can only act as he knows he will act.

If it is the case that like us god is restricted to the flow of time
and does not know the future (i.e. the choices that we make) then this
is a 'limited' view of omniscience. I'd just like to know what
combination of attributes the particular god of believers such as semi
actually have.

[Musycks]

Nicely stated Herbie... and how can anybody claim to know the mind of
this type of contradictory entity?
Why assert this being wants us to 'love' him? how could we know this?
let's look at the evidence....
Given the life experience of most of humanity since the dawn of
mankind a stronger case could be made for a sadistic
deity only keen on seeing humankind suffer... in fact finding 'love'
or empathy or the 'better angels' of our nature may be
a huge disappointment for this god. The fact that humans have given
this god such human failings is a pretty big clue to it's origins I
would have thought.

MR

On Feb 4, 8:51 pm, Herbiep <jackiestann...@googlemail.com> wrote:

[jetbase]

Let me clarify what I was asking. If you theoretically removed the
concept of time from yourself, what effect would that have of your own
free will?

[Herbie]

I have no idea what you mean by 'removing the concept of time'. Human
consciousness and identity is dependent upon time and could not exist
without it. An arrow of time and sequencing of thought is what we are,
without it we would merely be a solid shape in spacetime. It is one of
the reasons that god makes no sense to me, with his alleged attributes
he has no kind of consciousness that I can understand so I don't know
what theists are describing.

[jetbase]

Thanks Chris, that actually really helps me to understand where you're
coming from. If you'll allow me to ask one more similar question, and
your answer may be the same: What if there was only now, no future, no
past?

On Feb 8, 6:14 pm, Herbie <chris-stann...@campdencharities.org.uk>
wrote:

[Herbie]

What if there was only now, no future, no
> past?

I think that consciousness is not only an emergent phenomenon of
different portions of a spatially dispersed organ but that it is also
smeared in time. Our conscious thoughts are a mixture of sensations
from a few moments ago, triggered memories (by previous thoughts and
by the sensations) and the correlations over slightly differing time
periods of various groups of neurons firing. Clearly by my conception
of it if consciousness is smeared out to varying extents through time
then it can't exist in a 'moment'. Also, in my conception of it, there
would be no space without time. The only way disparate parts of space
can be related is through time. I'm afraid that the explain this I
would have to go into a bit of relativity. You can look up 'space
like', 'time like' and' light like' intervals if you are interested.
'Now' is a relative concept.

[Herbie]

What are you trying to get at jetbase? I might be able to be more
helpful if I understood.

[Joe]

On Feb 7, 3:12 am, Herbiep <jackiestann...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I haven't suggested
>
> " ...theoretically removing the concept of time..."
>
> However if time was an irrelevance to god, that is for god there is no
> arrow of time and his knowledge is not limited by a particular
> location in spacetime, then his omniscience means that he knows
> everything throughout time, past present and future. This would
> contradict free will (in some forms) since he knows the outcome of all
> decisions and did so before he made the creature making the decision.

How would that contradict the creature making the decision with free
will? Knowledge of an outcome does not cause the outcome.

> Likewise a god that knows everything also knows what he himself will
> do throughout time. He doesn't really have 'freewill' himself or
> omnipotency since he can only act as he knows he will act.
>

How would knowing what one is going to do render those actions not the
actions of the one doing them? Ability to predict one's own actions
is a result of knowledge and self-control, not lack of freedom.

In both cases, with the creature and with God, you seem, erroneously,
to be ascribing to free will the element of surprise, and to be
implying that the lack of the ability to surprise implies a lack of
freedom of will. I don't see why freedom in one's decisions requires
that the outcome be surprising. You seem to be conflating concepts
here.

[Joe]

On Feb 7, 8:05 am, Musycks <midi...@iprimus.com.au> wrote:
> Nicely stated Herbie... and how can anybody claim to know the mind of
> this type of contradictory entity?
> Why assert this being wants us to 'love' him? how could we know this?
> let's look at the evidence....
> Given the life experience of most of humanity since the dawn of
> mankind a stronger case could be made for a sadistic
> deity only keen on seeing humankind suffer...

Or, alternatively, the case that something went wrong, and that things
are not as they should be or were originally intended to be.

>in fact finding 'love'
> or empathy or the 'better angels' of our nature may be
> a huge disappointment for this god. The fact that humans have given
> this god such human failings is a pretty big clue to it's origins I
> would have thought.
>

Which humans did that? The God I know about, and have learned about,
has no failings at all, much less human failings. You aren't talking
about any God I have ever heard about.

[Tim]

On Feb 9, 3:47 pm, Joe <jfg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 7, 3:12 am, Herbiep <jackiestann...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > I haven't suggested
>
> > " ...theoretically removing the concept of time..."
>
> > However if time was an irrelevance to god, that is for god there is no
> > arrow of time and his knowledge is not limited by a particular
> > location in spacetime, then his omniscience means that he knows
> > everything throughout time, past present and future. This would
> > contradict free will (in some forms) since he knows the outcome of all
> > decisions and did so before he made the creature making the decision.
>
> How would that contradict the creature making the decision with free
> will?  Knowledge of an outcome does not cause the outcome.

If an entity knows what "happened" in the future, then nothing could
have changed what happened, including what ever that was causing in
the future. No ability to change = no free-will.

[Joe]

On Feb 10, 2:20 am, Tim <thcus...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On Feb 9, 3:47 pm, Joe <jfg...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 7, 3:12 am, Herbiep <jackiestann...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I haven't suggested
>
> > > " ...theoretically removing the concept of time..."
>
> > > However if time was an irrelevance to god, that is for god there is no
> > > arrow of time and his knowledge is not limited by a particular
> > > location in spacetime, then his omniscience means that he knows
> > > everything throughout time, past present and future. This would
> > > contradict free will (in some forms) since he knows the outcome of all
> > > decisions and did so before he made the creature making the decision.
>
> > How would that contradict the creature making the decision with free
> > will?  Knowledge of an outcome does not cause the outcome.
>
> If an entity knows what "happened" in the future, then nothing could
> have changed what happened, including what ever that was causing in
> the future. No ability to change = no free-will.
>

What if what happens is a deliberate change in accordance with a
will? Then it is the action of the will that we are observing,
causing the change, so it is absurd to say that there is "no ability
to change." Plainly, there is the ability to change the universe from
what it was, to what the will wills it to be.

You appear to be conflating the causing of a deliberate change in the
universe with the causing of a deliberate change in one's deliberate
action to cause change. This is of course impossible, but not by
anyone's omniscience, but simply by the law of non-contradiction. It
is impossible to both do and not do the same action. If one does the
action, then one does it; if one does not do it, then he does not do
it. The fact of the action either taking place or not taking place is
a fact of reality, and determining factor in whether or not it is a
reality is just the action of that will. If the action is known to
occur or not occur, then that knowledge matches up with the reality of
the action occurring or not occurring. If the action is unknown, the
reality of the action occurring or not occurring is still what it is,
without regard to whether or not it is known. Thus knowledge of the
action occurring or not occurring is entirely inconsequential to the
reality of it occurring or not occurring. And if it was (or is or
will be) a free will action, then that is what kind of an action it
was (or is, or will be.) Obviously, no one can change an action from
what it was, or is, or will be. This appears to be the source of your
confusion. You appear to want it that one cannot change the past, but
one can change the future, which is our intuitive concept of the
distinction between past and future. There is nothing wrong with our
intuitive concept, but it must be clearly understood, in light of
another intuitive concept that "it is what it is." It is easy for us
to get confused when we talk about the future and the past. We can
eliminate some of that confusion (hopefully, if you are honest) by
assigning the "is" of "it is what it is," to the past, the present,
and the future. Normally, the verb "is" is applied only to the
present, the future and the past being covered by "will be" and "was,"
respectively. But if we are going to examine the world in four
dimensions rather than three, we need to take the fourth dimension
into account and equalize it, so to speak, with the other three. This
is tricky for us because our experience moves along the dimension of
time. But seeing that we have an interior fifth dimension, we can
step back from our bondage to forward temporal motion, and picture the
universe as a four-block, a four-dimensional construct rather than
only three. And in this sense, then, we can say that the past is what
it is, the present is what it is, and the future is what it is.

With this in mind, then, consider the fact of a free-will decision and
the resulting free action. If the action already took place in the
past, then that past action is what it is, and no one can change it.
That much is intuitively obvious. Considering actions of the past is
the only way we, from our perspective in the present, can have a
handle on them and say that "it is what it is and no one can change
it." Person P did action A in the past. Does that mean that person P
could not have done action B as an alternative? No, it doesn't mean
that. But action B remains an unfulfilled hypothetical. P could
have, but did not do B. P could have not, but did do A. Now consider
the case where P is acting presently. Can he change his mind? Of
course he can. Does he? That is a question that will determine the
reality, either A or B. Suppose he does not change his mind and does
A. Then in the future, we will be able to look back with our clear
handle on things and say, "it is what it is," of this present, as the
past, in that future. Suppose, alternately, he changes his mind and
does not do A but does B instead. Then, from our future perspective,
we will say that B is what it is, and nothing will change it. But P
could have changed it, in what is currently the present to us, by
deciding differently. P can change the future now, if he chooses to.
But whatever he decides, A or B, will in the future become irrevocably
the past, that nothing can change. We can see both that there is the
possibility of either A or B, and that one or the other will be the
actuality, and not both. It is impossible (let us stipulate) to
choose both, so given A, it is not possible that B, and given B, it is
not possible that A.

If the decision is still in the future, then, all the same logic will
apply once that future becomes present, and thus plainly, P's free
will will be intact in the future, unaffected by our coming knowledge
in a more distant future of his decision. But the fact does not
remain in flux once the decision is made. The decision, as the
determining factor, determines the reality. The decision is a free
will decision, whether in the past, the present, or the future. The
decision is the determining factor, whether in the past, the present,
or the future. Thus, if in the past, the present, or the future, A or
B becomes irrevocable fact, it was, or is, or will be, due to that
free will decision, and thus, far from eliminating free will, the fact
of A or B points to its necessity as the determining factor.

Not even God can make a thing both be and not be in the same way at
the same time, as that is a logical contradiction and thus
incoherently specified. But the unfreedom of God or creatures to make
things contradictory is not an inability to make them be, just an
inability to produce a contradiction. Freedom of will does not
include freedom to produce a contradiction, any more than omnipotence
includes power to produce a contradiction. The problem is not
omniscience, but simply the impossibility of a contradiction, as
something incoherently specified.

[Tim]

There can be no so called future point in space for a God that knows
the future. If God already knows about that time and space that
happened then it cannot be considered a future time and space but for
only his little people who only experience past and present points. If
God already knows the future time and space, then what ever his little
people do in the past, present, future are all set in stone or he is
contradicting his ability to know all those times in space at once.

You claim "If the decision is still in the future, then, all the same
logic will
apply once that future becomes present," I think here you are mixing
the limited abilities God gave his little peoples with God's
omniscience. God only allows his little peoples the first two, he gets
to have all three, therefore has no future by knowing all points in
space and time all at once. He cannot grant his little peoples a will
to change. What change? What is change? He can't know change if the
point is or has happened to him. Which leads to the common "knowing"
argument.

The common argument: "Because God knows the future, it does not mean
that he does not allow change." It would seem that your God would have
to be in a constant flux of change in what he knows to be fact about
all points.

I don't know? I guess, try this: Take point A (past) point B (present)
point C (future) If God's little people make a change in point B then
point C would be different. Now flip it. If God already knows (set in
stone) what point C is, then his little peoples could not have changed
B. Just like us little peoples knowing (A) the past (set in stone),
(A) could not have change. (A) could have changed before it became
known. If at present (B) we know that Jesus walked the earth (A), then
A is set in stone. It had the ability to change while it was A and we
did not know B. But once we know B it could not have changed. Once God
knows C, nothing can change A or B. God could not realize a personal
thought change in one of his little people's head. Change cannot have
meaning for one who can see all points at once. What we see as a
thought change, God sees as constant process with a known outcome or
his A,B, C are not reality.

It is like, why would I engineer a pencil that can turn into a pen if
that is what it is going to do anyway? Why would God give man free-
will when he already knows what man is going to do?

[Joe]

Not all men do the same things. They decide, with freedom, what to
do. That is free will by definition. Is that what you are attempting
to deny?

There is nothing unknown to God, so God knows what it is like to
experience time as passing just as we experience it. It is
incoherent, then, to say that "change has no meaning" for God. God
knows what change is and what change means, just as He knows every
other thing.

In reality, the free-will decision that each soul makes, for or
against Love, is eternal. Each soul makes the decision only once with
finality, so temporal sequence doesn't really enter into it. Each
soul decides, and reaps the reward of their decision, for love or for
hate. The reward of love is love, and the reward of hate is hate.

[Tim]

How do you know this?

It is incoherent, then, to say that "change has no meaning" for
God. God
> knows what change is and what change means, just as He knows every
> other thing.
>
> In reality, the free-will decision that each soul makes, for or
> against Love, is eternal. Each soul makes the decision only once with
> finality, so temporal sequence doesn't really enter into it.

Doesn't sound as if they could have really fallen from grace.

Each
> soul decides, and reaps the reward of their decision, for love or for
> hate. The reward of love is love, and the reward of hate is hate.

That's Life!

[Joe]

It follows directly from God's omniscience.

>   It is incoherent, then, to say that "change has no meaning" for
> God.  God
>
> > knows what change is and what change means, just as He knows every
> > other thing.
>
> > In reality, the free-will decision that each soul makes, for or
> > against Love, is eternal.  Each soul makes the decision only once with
> > finality, so temporal sequence doesn't really enter into it.
>
> Doesn't sound as if they could have really fallen from grace.
>

Are we talking about individual decisions or are we talking about the
primary exercise of free will?

>   Each
>
> > soul decides, and reaps the reward of their decision, for love or for
> > hate.  The reward of love is love, and the reward of hate is hate.
>
> That's Life!
>

Yep.

The Catholic religion simply puts greater love --- infinite love in
fact --- at our disposal. That is why I continue to practice it.

[jetbase]

I'm not trying to get at anything, I'm just trying to understand where
you're coming from & why you come to the conclusions that you do.
Thanks for replying.

Cheers,
Glenn

On Feb 9, 8:30 pm, Herbie <chris-stann...@campdencharities.org.uk>
wrote:

[Herbie]

Fair enough.