omniscient meaning "all-knowing".
i'm sure some of you have come across this--- if you believe in an "all-knowing" god AND believe that you have freewill, it's illogical. Say, you have two choices... A and B. If god knows you're gonna choose B, what are your chances for choosing A? none, that is if god IS all-knowing.
on the contrary you could choose B if god is NOT "all-knowing". get it?
this thing has been going for ages. most people just end up believing one is true, but you can never believe both at the same time.
share your thoughts. 
Allah(God) is all KNOWING, Allah knows what your gonna do next, when ur gnna die, how u gonna die..EVERYTHING!!!
| tingkagol wrote: |
| share your thoughts. |
you can totally believe both at the same time, as long as you understand a clear line between all-knowing and predestination. It can be a really fine line, and its getting blurred in your example, as it often does. Just because God knows we are going to do something doesn't necesarily mean he predestined it to happen that way.
Since God knows us better than we know ourselves, and he knows everything that goes into every choice we face, he knows what we are going to do.
I've had a friend like this once, of course not on the same level as God. We knew each other so well we could pretty easily know exactly what the other person was going to choose even when they weren't to sure themselves. Does that mean we made the other person choose the way they did? No, we just knew each other that well.
Where it starts to get tricky is when we consider God's influence on the circumstances of the choices. | Quote: |
| I've had a friend like this once, of course not on the same level as God. We knew each other so well we could pretty easily know exactly what the other person was going to choose even when they weren't to sure themselves. Does that mean we made the other person choose the way they did? No, we just knew each other that well. |
exactly my point. no matter how well you know each other, there will always be a certain percentage that we end up doing the other thing than the EXPECTED thing.
say, you can expect your friend to do certain things 99.9999% most of the time, but the 0.0001% still gives space for CHOICE- no matter how you think about it. but when it comes to god, it's 100%--- that is if you believe he is omniscient. it leaves NO ROOM for choice. the fine line between predestination and knowledge simply represents CHOICE. don't you think?
Sure, it may appear we have full control of our lives. but with the existence of an all-knowing being, are the choices we clearly see everyday merely illusions? like playing a starring role in a movie wherein the director already knows the ending? i know it's probably the lamest comparison, but i hope you do get my point.
hehe. by the way, thanks for posting your thoughts. | tingkagol wrote: |
| hehe. by the way, thanks for posting your thoughts. |
Hey, no problem bro.
So your view is that since God knows what we are going to do, we are predestined to do it. Is that an accurate summation?yeah, i know. kind of weird... but true in a sense. Godly knowledge is most powerful--- and what he knows- there's nothing we can do to prove him wrong... that we are unpredictable, that we can do things without him knowing. my oppinion desert this kind of thinking couse gods knowlage is way more then we can handel gods knowlage is a topic with when spoken about by the most knowlageable of ppl it more ten thay can chuw
im out
Perhaps a simpler answer is that there is no god, and we are all acting inside a system of biology that exists in a sphere around the Earth.
Yes, I know... Blasphemy...
| tingkagol wrote: |
| yeah, i know. kind of weird... but true in a sense. Godly knowledge is most powerful--- and what he knows- there's nothing we can do to prove him wrong... that we are unpredictable, that we can do things without him knowing. |
hmm... interesting
I thought of a good analogy while I was sitting in a really boring meeting today, but I've since forgotten it. Sorry.You can believe in both. If you believe God is all-knowing, then we'll say God knows what you'll do next... But you don't. You still have that choice, but God just knows in advance.
Its impossible to reconcile, because our concept of time is linear. But if you consider the possibility that this omniscient being of yours exists outside our current understanding of 'time' then it is possible to reconcile 'omniscient being' with free will.
| Quote: |
| Perhaps a simpler answer is that there is no god, and we are all acting inside a system of biology that exists in a sphere around the Earth. |
that is only one choice you can derive from this. the other being us not having "free-will".
| Quote: |
hmm... interesting
I thought of a good analogy while I was sitting in a really boring meeting today, but I've since forgotten it. Sorry. |
dude, remember it! haha. stuff like these are so confusing you need to write down those ideas. haha.
| Quote: |
| You can believe in both. If you believe God is all-knowing, then we'll say God knows what you'll do next... But you don't. You still have that choice, but God just knows in advance. |
with that statement, "choice" has become an illusion. it may seem a choice, but what's the point of "choosing" when someone ALREADY knows what you're going to choose?
| Quote: |
| Its impossible to reconcile, because our concept of time is linear. But if you consider the possibility that this omniscient being of yours exists outside our current understanding of 'time' then it is possible to reconcile 'omniscient being' with free will. |
i've been thinking about this too... i figured an alibi for this would have something to do with "time".... to eliminate PREcognitions, PREdestinations, PREdictions (lol) that this subject revolves around... etc etc. need to think about this a bit more. | tingkagol wrote: |
exactly my point. no matter how well you know each other, there will always be a certain percentage that we end up doing the other thing than the EXPECTED thing.
|
Even if you know every miniscule detail of the other person? Hm?
The human brain is naught but a lot of chemical and electrical signals traveling along a predetermined network. Now, if you knew every detail of a specific brain and every detail of the input to that brain, could you not, given infinite proccessing power, predict the output?Hard question. It seemed obvious for me that god knows us beter than we do, but I never thought that it would mean that we have actually no free will.
What I have found is a comment to Catholic Church Catechism made by a Polish theology doctor. I must say it's a very good point of view. I spend some time translating it, so please take some time and read this 
| Rev dr M. Kaszowski wrote: |
"God knows if we'll go to heaven or hell. He knows our future as well. But it doesn't mean that he forces us to do anything. Here's an example.
Looking from my window, I can see a person walking towards a hole in the ground, but he doesn't notice it. I shout at him to change his direction, but he doesn't listen and keeps on walking. Looking from my high-floor flat I get quite sure that this guy will fall into that hole. However, this doesn't mean that it is my fault that he falls there. I haven't pushed him there, but he fell there himself, as he didn't listen to my good advice. My prediction of his accident didn't take away his free will.
The same situation is with God, He knows the whole our life, our free decisions, our future life, but this doesn't mean that He decides instead of us. If God predicts someone's perdition, it neither means that He predestinates Him to go to hell, nor that He wants it. God want the eternal happiness for everyone, and He wants to help every each of us, but only when we want it. He doesn't roam into our lifes. The only cause that people go to hell is that they don't want the help of God, or turn away from truth and good." |
If god knows everything in advance, then why He hope that otherwise can happen?
Everything in advance can be known by God, only if everything is prefix. If everything is not prefixed, no one can know it in advance, even the God.
When everything is prefixed, then where is free will?
I can see how you would think that God's previous knowledge of an event points to it being prefixed. For example, we can say that God created humans through evolution. He set everything up: the laws of physics, time, space, and matter. He put all those things together knowing what they would produce. Everything was carefully calculated to turn out a certain way. Hence God may have directed evolution. In the same way, one might say that God made humans with the ability to think, and he wired us in specific ways, so he knows where our thoughts will take us and what decisions we will make. In this case, God's creating us eliminates the possibility of free will. It's like building a car or any other machine. We determine what it will do simply by creating it.
However, when we build a car, we know that it will eventually depreciate and malfunction. We do not intend such occurrences, but by allowing the car to function, these things inevitably occur. Similarly, we inevitably do not always choose what God intends us to choose because of our own limitations. We know the effects of the limitations of cars, as God knows the effects of our limitations and everything else that determines our decisions. In both cases, those effects are allowed to happen. If God didn't know what we would choose, he could not allow us to choose it. In order to have free will, we have to be allowed to make choices.
Once upon a time I used to login to Frihost to find REAL debates with a certain degree of intellect and reasoning in them, it was actually stimulating to reply and interact.
Unfortunately these discussions seem to be getting more and more banal with posts like " allah knows everything " or " the anti-christ is an arab "....
come on people.
You can't, even if god lived out side of time. Omniscient is all knowing, that means he would know everything, that means that he would know whats going to happen 10,000 years in the future with 100% accuracy which means that there can be no choice but if there is choice, God could only say the likely hood of something happening. For instance a man come to a fork in a road, the chances of the guy going down path A is 50% and the chances of the guy going down path bis 50%. Now if the guy goes down path A he gets robed and killed. If he takes path be he gets to his detonation, gets a place to live, gets married and has children.
If God is omniscient, God knows which way the guy will go thus the guy has no choice but to go that way but if they guy has free will, then God can not know witch way the guy will go, he could only guess and thus is not omniscient. Add in the butterfly effect and the idea of Gods omniscient is killed completely.
Who cares if Somebody already knows? That Somebody won't directly tell you. It's set up so it is a "surprise". This isn't the words I wanted to use, but it's all I can think of at the moment.
Who carse? Think about all the needless suffering and death in the world, all the serial killers and psychopaths, the Jeffry Dormers, the David Kreshes, The Charles Manson's, the Stalins and the Hitlers of the world.
Ask a 5 year old girl who was kidnapped and tortured who carse if God know whats going to happen before it happens.
If there is a God and it is omniscient, it is the most evil thing in existence cause it has the power to stop all or most of that but doesn't and obveusly dosen't care about anything.
Let's search for the definition of choice.
If you are without any external influence to pick a certain option out of many options, then you could say that you have a choice in the matter.
The choice becomes an illusion if you think you have choice, but actually, other factors which you aren't aware of are compelling you to choose the option you are about to choose.
At a personal level, if you are free from the external pressure or influences which force you to take one particular choice, then you've got choice.
Yet, if at a level beyond person, if someone knows your choice before-hand, then you could call your own personal choice an illusion.
Going by your examples and your point of view, I suppose it is acceptable to assume that an omniscient God means that we do not have free will at the highest level.
However, we are unaware of what God knows (assuming he knows everything)... and by the pure definition and idea of God, no one knows as much as God does. This means that at a hunan level, we do not know the future, we do not know what choice we are about to take, and it does come down more-or-less to free will. We are still responsible for our actions, and we still have the right to access the situation and make our choice.
Another thing to think about is the fact that even though God knows what choice we're going to take, he need not necessarily do anything to change the outcome of that choice, or change the consequences of the choice we make. This once again means that we are responsible for the direct and indirect consequences of our choices, and this is in concurrence with free will. What I'm trying to say is that we can assume that both the concepts of free will and an omniscient being are true if the omniscient being does not interfere in the choices, if he only knows the choices we're going to take, and he lets us free to take those choices.
In the case of the example which the_mariska took, if God is the man standing at the window, and He can see that the man is walking towards the hole, then He knows that either the man will fall or he won't, and he need not waste his time shouting for the man to fall. If God shouted for the man to fall, and the man still chose to fall in, then that means God doesn't know everything.
| PoetsIncorporated wrote: |
| However, when we build a car, we know that it will eventually depreciate and malfunction. We do not intend such occurrences, but by allowing the car to function, these things inevitably occur. Similarly, we inevitably do not always choose what God intends us to choose because of our own limitations. We know the effects of the limitations of cars, as God knows the effects of our limitations and everything else that determines our decisions. In both cases, those effects are allowed to happen. If God didn't know what we would choose, he could not allow us to choose it. In order to have free will, we have to be allowed to make choices. |
Another good point.
| Soulfire wrote: |
| Who cares if Somebody already knows? That Somebody won't directly tell you. It's set up so it is a "surprise". This isn't the words I wanted to use, but it's all I can think of at the moment. |
This would then mean that our free will is an illusion after all. | The Conspirator wrote: |
Who carse? Think about all the needless suffering and death in the world, all the serial killers and psychopaths, the Jeffry Dormers, the David Kreshes, The Charles Manson's, the Stalins and the Hitlers of the world.
Ask a 5 year old girl who was kidnapped and tortured who carse if God know whats going to happen before it happens.
If there is a God and it is omniscient, it is the most evil thing in existence cause it has the power to stop all or most of that but doesn't and obveusly dosen't care about anything. |
Surprising to how different conclusions have we come.. I would interpret this another way. God gave us free will, and did it seriously. Free will means the possibility of doing good or bad, and facing the consequences of oneself's behaviour. He could be a nice daddy like you would like to, who forced everybody to behave well and to be happy. But that would be the real situation without the free will. He loves us so much, that He allows even to do evil. Of course for a certain period of time. Only until the death. | the_mariska wrote: |
| The Conspirator wrote: | Who carse? Think about all the needless suffering and death in the world, all the serial killers and psychopaths, the Jeffry Dormers, the David Kreshes, The Charles Manson's, the Stalins and the Hitlers of the world.
Ask a 5 year old girl who was kidnapped and tortured who carse if God know whats going to happen before it happens.
If there is a God and it is omniscient, it is the most evil thing in existence cause it has the power to stop all or most of that but doesn't and obveusly dosen't care about anything. |
Surprising to how different conclusions have we come.. I would interpret this another way. God gave us free will, and did it seriously. Free will means the possibility of doing good or bad, and facing the consequences of oneself's behaviour. He could be a nice daddy like you would like to, who forced everybody to behave well and to be happy. But that would be the real situation without the free will. He loves us so much, that He allows even to do evil. Of course for a certain period of time. Only until the death. |
Th problem with that is. Why should others suffer for the actions of you or me or any one else? Giving some one the freedom to make a choice is one thing but allowing that person to cause needless suffering and death is something else all together. Letting some one choose what they won;t to worship or even if they worship is not the same as allowing people to go out and commit mass murder.
And of course, us having free will means that God can not predict what we would do only a guess.
