Restating the Paradox

[NotReady]

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Now go sit in the corner with BluffTHIS for three billion years.


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But after a mere 3b years I'm out and in heaven. Where will you be?

[Bigdaddydvo]

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You realize of course that after you die, God will show you posts like what you just wrote and say something like:

" Not Ready, I put you on the earth to talk about issues like this. But then you waste your talents and screw everything up by insisting that the nutcase Calvin with all his silly and often wrong minute details, needs to be followed. Thus putting off those who might otherwise have listened to you. Now go sit in the corner with BluffTHIS for three billion years.

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If by "in the corner" you refer to the Catholic idea of Purgatory...it's not such a bad thing. The souls in Purgatory (and I fully expect to be one...hopefully not for 3 billion years) eventually get to Heaven.

[eastbay]

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A natural Universe operating according to fixed laws is not necessarily a deterministic Universe.


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I don't see how something that is in accordance with fixed laws isn't determined by those laws.


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The LAWS are fixed. The outcomes of those laws are probabilistic in the theory.

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Evolution doesn't procede randomly. Evolution procedes according to random variation and non-random selection.


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You're saying evolution doesn't proceed randomly, it proceeds according to random variation. I don't see the difference.


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It seems clear that you don't know anything about science. I suppose that's hardly surprising.

You know how heat flows from hot regions to cold? That's an orderly process with structure, right? Do you realize that heat transfer on a microscopic level is just atoms wiggling around randomly, bumping into each other in a process that appears completely random on a local scale? But if you back up and look at the bigger picture, this underlying random process creates a bigger picture that has a very neat and orderly structure to it.

This is like evolution. It is only random locally. Globally, there is an emergent order from that randomness. That's what we see in the orderly progression of species.

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It isn't a question of physical difference. If free will exists for man it is because God is in control and allows it. If there is no God, either fixed law reigns, so all is determined, or chance reigns, so all is accidental.

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Is the random variation of atoms in a bar of iron accidental? And yet don't we see on a larger scale the very orderly flow of heat emerging from that underlying random process?

Why are you troubled by a universe where "chance reigns"? I don't think this implies what you assume it to imply.

eastbay

[NotReady]

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The LAWS are fixed. The outcomes of those laws are probabilistic in the theory.


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What you want are fixed laws and absolute chance, which is self-contradictory. Either the laws are ultimate or chance is ultimate. Either way, no free will.

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It seems clear that you don't know anything about science.


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I know that science assumes order in the universe AND chance though it can prove neither and they are self-contradictory.

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Do you realize that heat transfer on a microscopic level is just atoms wiggling around randomly, bumping into each other in a process that appears completely random on a local scale?


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Which is it, random or apparently random?

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But if you back up and look at the bigger picture, this underlying random process creates a bigger picture that has a very neat and orderly structure to it.


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Ok, order. But order produced randomly. So how can it really be order? Why can't the process randomly be completely different tomorrow? The local order that is randomly produced can just as easily turn into disorder if chance is the underlying cause.

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Why are you troubled by a universe where "chance reigns"?


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How can anything mean anything if chance reigns? What purpose or meaning is there in an accident? If your criticism of Christianity is just a random flow of electrons, why should anyone pay any attention to it? How can you claim validity to something that is the product of an accident? And if the will is accidental, it may be free in the sense of undetermined, but how is it a choice?

[Borodog]

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I don't see how something that is in accordance with fixed laws isn't determined by those laws.

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If you aim an electron beam at two narrow slits placed very close together in a thin screen, quantum mechanics can describe the probabilities that an individual electron in the beam will pass through the left slit or the right slit, but it cannot predict which slit it will go through.

A fundamental part of quantum mechanics is uncertainty. This prevents quantum mechanics from being deterministic, since it prevents you from ever knowing all of the initial conditions to make your predictions from. If you know the initial position of an electron more and more accurately, you must become more and more uncertain about its velocity (momentum, more specifically), and vice versa. As I stated, quantum mechanics is a fundamentally non-deterministic science.

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Evolution doesn't procede randomly. Evolution procedes according to random variation and non-random selection.[/b]

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You're saying evolution doesn't proceed randomly, it proceeds according to random variation. I don't see the difference.

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Since you apparently missed it, I've bolded the second half of my statement for your convenience. Variation is random. Selection is not.

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How does the evolution of mankind over the past x million years have anything to do with whether I choose waffles or pancakes for breakfast?

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Your genes, which are determined by random variation, determine which you will choose.

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Really. How? I mean, I presume you have a naturalistic mechanism all worked out to explain this, right? I'm all ears.

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What I mean is, what is physically different about a Universe where a Creator God exists that allows free will than a naturalistic Universe where no Creator God exists?

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It isn't a question of physical difference. If free will exists for man it is because God is in control and allows it.

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Really, what is the physical process whereby the divinely allowed Free Will is exercised? Apparently Free Will occurs in the brain, yes? Via chemical and electrical processes, yes? Because those are what impliment the chosen actions, chemical and electrical processes within the brain that tell my voice box to order either pancakes or waffles, yes?

So how exactly does the physical Free Will mechanism operate? And what is physically different in a Universe without a Creator God that makes the chemical and electrical processes different?

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If there is no God, either fixed law reigns, so all is determined,

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As I've pointed out, this is incorrect.

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or chance reigns, so all is accidental.

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I'm not even sure what this means, if anything.

[NotReady]

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quantum mechanics can describe the probabilities that an individual electron in the beam will pass through the left slit or the right slit, but it cannot predict which slit it will go through.


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QM isn't omniscient.

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Since you apparently missed it, I've bolded the second half of my statement for your convenience. Variation is random. Selection is not.


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Which makes it either accidental or determined. Neither produce free will.

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Really. How? I mean, I presume you have a naturalistic mechanism all worked out to explain this, right? I'm all ears.


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I thought you did.

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So how exactly does the physical Free Will mechanism operate?


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In God's universe we are more than chemistry. In a naturalistic, random, determined, accidental universe we are only chemistry.

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I'm not even sure what this means, if anything


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Chance and accident are synonymous. Just interchange the terms.

[Snoogins47]

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Restating the Paradox

I realize there is already a free will thread, and an omniscience/omnipotence thread, but I think this is worthy of a new one. I don't think a logical refutation of this is possible.

Premise 1: God is Omnipotent and Omnicient.
Premise 2: God created humans.
Premise 3: Those humans have free will.

This logically does not follow. Here is why:

If God is omnipotent, he can create things. He can create an infinite number of things. Since he is also omnicient, how knows the exact result of creating each of those infinite possible creations. Let's say he chooses one of the possible creations to create. How can that creation possibly have free will if God knows exactly what it will do, and chose to create that specific being over an infinite number of other possible beings he could create? By choosing to create that being, he also chose it's fate, therefore it does not have free will.

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I always figured this is reconciled by the fact that God, were he to exist, would transcend the man-made concept of chronology, then I try to wrap my head around the concept of a God existing outside of the dimensions we're constrained to, thereby he could 'see' everything that has, and will, happen along the "Time" dimension despite the fact that we haven't got there yet. Once I try, and fail, to visualize 4-dimensional spacetime with some old guy outside of it staring in like a Peeping Tom, I usually just go play a game of Madden 2005.

[ZeeJustin]

I believe I proved that God chooses our actions in my OP, but no one has made a reasonable argue against this.

Philo, you said that God is not choosing our destiny. By choosing to create us over the infinite number of other possible creations, he is the one making the choice.

NotReady, your post tried to prove that free will is not possible without God. This does not refute my contention at all, since my contention is that free will is not possible even with God. FWIW, I believe that free will does not exist, but that has very little to do with my OP.

Let me restate my OP. There are an infinite number of creations that God could make. Each of those creations has a destiny that God is fully aware of. By choosing any number of those infinite creations to create, God is choosing which destinies will exist on Earth, and which destinies will never come to be.

[imported_luckyme]

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There are an infinite number of creations that God could make. Each of those creations has a destiny that God is fully aware of. By choosing any number of those infinite creations to create, God is choosing which destinies will exist on Earth, and which destinies will never come to be.

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Extracting one attritbute of a god and trying an analysis from there often leads to conclusions that may not be useful when considering the entire god. As given, there are reasonable arguments that free will was exercised by the person, regardless of the fact that god snuffed out the other branches, but whatever validity they may have is based on this voyeur god caricature.

But such a god may as well not exist, since nothing (in the life of the person) would change whether he did or not. An intervening god, a meddling god, that presents a much tougher universe for free will to survive in.

People having free will in a universe where god has free will is an interesting argument to make. Obviously if god doesn't have free will that's a different scenario.

Ignore this if I've morphed your question too much, but you don't specify in your scenario what attributes god has a far as meddling and/or his free will... I'm not sure what your default assumption was.

thanks, luckyme

[NotReady]

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NotReady, your post tried to prove that free will is not possible without God. This does not refute my contention at all, since my contention is that free will is not possible even with God


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I didn't deal specifically with free will and God, partly because I have before, partly because the issue of free will if God doesn't exist is rarely discussed, and partly because it's an issue that has occupied philosophers since Plato and hasn't yet been resolved.

From a Biblical standpoint, Scripture never says man has free will. The issue is always presented in the context of responsibility. The Bible is crystal clear that man is responsible to God. We humans think that means man has to have free will. I agree with this at least to the extent that his will is uncoerced. But when you try to get past that, it becomes difficult to even define what we mean. For more in depth analysis you might want to google libertarian and compatabilist ideas of the will. The central problem is the fact we are bound by cause and effect thinking. Since every effect must have a cause, the will must have a cause. But if it does then how is it free? But if it isn't free, how are we responsible? Atheism doesn't solve this because either we are determined and so not free, or we are free and so not responsible.

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By choosing any number of those infinite creations to create, God is choosing which destinies will exist on Earth, and which destinies will never come to be.


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I don't necessarily agree with the infinite creation idea, but it's a minor point. But your last sentence agrees with the Reformed idea of God's decrees, God's plan for the universe. In a sine qua non sense, God causes everything. Calvin tried to distinguish between proximate and remote cause and others have used similar approaches. None of them really work, however. What I believe is simply that God can cause to happen what He wants to happen and use man's free will as a secondary cause. Another way it's phrased is that God ordains the means as well as the ends. But in the end there is an element of mystery. This is not an evasion, it is an admission of ignorance. I don't think atheistic naturalism solves the problem though. If you simply deny free will there are logical consequences that most people would not accept. In the end, like most if not all non-theistic systems, you are reduced to pragmatism, which for obvious reasons is a poor solution.