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Gagh! My head....

*hands an aspirin to Kate*

Huh.

So we don't have free will, because everything we do is being controlled by a higher power so something that hasn't happened yet well come to be?

Or, is all you're saying is, God knows what is going to happen in the future....

Gagh! My head....

Take away the therefore and your conclusions thereof and you have it.

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that God is in the future already and merely knows what happened. Of course, in order for God to make the universe he would have to be in the past making it, and since the idea of God is eternal, he is not in only one time period or the other but throughout all. So he has foreknowledge of the future by being there now!

Gah!

So you're saying that God already knows how the future is going to be, therefore, he controlls what we're doing now so it turns into that?

OK, now I've confused myself....

I already said that person-who-has-my-brother's-boyfriend's-name. ( I'm not kidding. My heart jumped when I saw your name. I was like, why the fuck is he here? Heh. Not that I have anything against him. (sighs) )

If you want some real mental loops, you could see it the way I've thought of it: that God is in the future already and merely knows what happened. Of course, in order for God to make the universe he would have to be in the past making it, and since the idea of God is eternal, he is not in only one time period or the other but throughout all. So he has foreknowledge of the future by being there now!

Put your brain around that, and we'll call you cured of whatever insanity I may have!

Humans are sort of a mesh of everything. If you want to drag religon into it by the feet, we all have as a whole, some of the divine, and some of the damned, some of the celestial, some of the demonic, some of the fae, some of the magical. It's all part of us. And when those many things come together in one race, it's disasterous, and beautiful, deadly and awe-inspiring. It's...everything, just like we're everything. But. I doubt I'm making sense.

I'm not over-thinking it; you're over-simplifying it.

I'll use a personal example, which I think illustrates my point best:

A couple of years ago, I went on a trip with my high school marching band to Disneyland for a parade. Needless to say, we also had a bit of fun at the park during our free time. During one of these trips, I went to California Adventure with a few friends. The first thing you see upon entering is a gigantic roller coaster known as "California Screamin'". Now, I am deathly afraid of heights (well, more afraid of falling from heights, not the heights themselves) and, at that time, had never been on a roller coaster. But you know what I did? I got in line for California Screamin'. And I liked it.

Did I know that about myself? No. I thought I would rather die than get on a roller coaster and have fun. Now, if I didn't know I was capable of consciously getting on a roller coaster (and a big one at that), how do you expect me to believe God knows everything I will do simply based on my personality and past actions?

It's also rather interesting to note that's actually a form of determinism. Our actions are determined by our personalities, our characters, and our prior actions. No true free will.

Arguing against a determinist is hard. I should know since I spent all last quarter in a philosophy class.

I'm not sure how to explain this best but we're not erratic creatures. We have the capability of change but really we just respond to our environment and situations. It all really comes down to variables. With God there are no unknown variables. You think Clpo13 that we are erratic because you can't know the whole situation someone is in. You don't know the whole past of said person, you don't know how it made them feel or how it affects their reactions to certain situations. But God does know, he knows everything about us, down to the number of hairs on our heads. So he can tell what we are going to pick. Also God knows our intentions, our heart even our thoughts so why wouldn't he be able to tell what deicision we are going to make? does him knowing stop what decision we have? No. He just knows, you're trying to make this big confusing, putting way too much thought, over complicated argument when in reality it's simple he knows us as well as we know ourselves and he knows how we are going to act. It's not complicated nor is it hard.

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If you know a person well enough you know what decisions said person makes.

No, you have a good idea of what they might do. Humans are erratic creatures. No matter how well you know someone, they still have the ability to do something completely unexpected. I don't really know how best to explain that.

The Way to look at it isn't that God knows because you've already made your decision or he knows because he's going to force you.

It's More like a best friend. God Knows Eveything about you so he knows you even better than a best friend. If you know a person well enough you know what decisions said person makes. So if i'm your best friend and i know you love hamburgers and it's lunch time and i know you can afford one and you have time to go get it then i know you're going to go get a hamburger. If i then also know that you'e been getting tired of burgers recently and you want to try something different and you kinda got a hankering for tacos then i know you're gonna go get tacos. Not becuase i've forced you to but because i know you.

Wow? You mean me "answering for them" was actually close to the truth? *Gasp* Except that face isn't smiling; it's scowling.

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stop thinking of time as a line you can move along. Once you get over that, talk to me, and we can theorize together.

Well, what else can it be? For this universe, it's really just a line. I suppose it could be more if you included more universes, but time is simply duration: you go from one point in time to the next. One point is five seconds ago, the other point is now. Other lines can branch out from points along the line as possibilities, but they disappear once the point has gone from the present into the past since only one possibility occurred.

Time is basically a line in the fourth dimension. You can bend it and fold it into the fifth and higher dimensions, but a folded line is still a line. (Hurray for string theory, which I've only just begun to learn!)

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Originally posted by Holliewood:
Oh, and I still don't get why people think that predestination means the same thing as no free will.

Because it is? Look, predestination is "previous determination as if by destiny or fate." If your actions are predetermined, you must do them no matter what. You think you are making free choices, but in reality, your choices were already made for you. If you can't make choices, you don't have free will. Every single thing you ever do has been predetermined, meaning you never had a say in the matter.

Anyways, it is more like Shade said. In order for free will to exist, at least part of life must not be determined. But if every human action is predetermined, there can be no free will.

You can theorize all you want about the concept of time, but knowing how it came to be is not accessible to us. We can't fully understand something when we don't know how it began. So all the arguments against God's existence that are based on time are pretty much superfluous. Of course, that doesn't mean you should stop thinking about it. I think reasoning is really important, but not the only there is in trying to understand things.

You can theorize anything you want to.

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Yeah, I agree Shade. I believe God isn't restricted by time. If He created this universe, then it is very likely that He created time to begin with. Don't you think God would be beyond time?

You can't theorize this issue, moatly because the human brain is not capable of comprehending a timeless space. Theoretical physics have concluded(they are theoretical remember) that the universe is composed of more dimensions than we consciously perceive, but we are mostly incapable of understanding this because the human brain functions on a 3 Dimensional level. Time is likewise.

I didn't answer for them. I clarified what they said. You had it mixed up, so I cleared it up a bit. I gave you a pair of spectacles and you're mad at me. Can I have them back?

( sigh ) I'm leaving. You don't have to cater to me. I just told you is all. Brought it to your attention?

Good God.

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I don't care what God thinks. I'm talking about you.

What about me?

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I'm answering because I'm here. And I want to. And also there's nothing better than discussiong good soul-theory, Which is my favourite thing to do.

By all means, go ahead. I'm here for the same reason. When did I ever tell anyone to shut up?

And even though you were rude to me (it at least came across that way), I wanted to know why you would take it upon yourself to answer for other people. If you have an opinion about it, then just share yours. And I'm not sure what you mean by honest question, so I'll skip that.

Last but not least, I can't help it if you are annoyed. What am I supposed to bow down to you and make sure I don't piss you off by using the word "He"? Seems a bit ridiculous to me. So, if you want to know why I sounded a little defensive in the last post, it may have something to do with the fact that you are criticizing me and not my arguments.

I don't care what God thinks. I'm talking about you.

I'm answering because I'm here. And I want to. And also there's nothing better than discussiong good soul-theory, Which is my favourite thing to do.

Also, I don't know the answer to that, because I'm not them, and I obviously don't think that way. I could give it a shot if you'd like, but I doubt it was an honest question anyway.

..I wasn't rude to you, all I did was admit I was annoyed, which if you had seen my face in real life, you would have known that anyway. Gives you no right to be rude, so shut up and start talking civily.