100 replies to this topic

[Arbenol68]

This question is primarily for those that believe in the God of the Bible.

Would it be correct to think of God as “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived” (Anselm)?

If so, this implies that he (I'll use 'he' for the sake of convention) is omniscient and omnipresent (as well as omnibenevolent – but I'll leave that one for now). In fact, it more than implies. It becomes imperative that this is so. To me this means he exists outside of cosmological space and time. That he is everywhere, and knows everything – all that was, is and forever will be. If not, then this is not God because I can conceive of a greater being,

The bit that interests me is the 'knowing what will be' bit. He's knows all about us and everyone who ever will be. Beyond this he knows exactly what each of us (and those yet to come) will do and think.

Now, from reading this board it becomes clear that there are many who believe in 'original sin'. That Adam and Eve chose to disobey God. It is also clear that we all have a choice in our conduct. We can choose to sin or not. I know many (if not all) Christians believe we have 'free will' – to choose to obey or not.

It strikes me, that if God already knows what each of us will think and will do, then it makes little difference what we 'choose' to do, because it has already been fated (for want of a better word).

So, if God is omniscient and omnipresent, do we really have freewill, or is this an illusion? If we can choose, then is it correct to conclude that God is not the greatest thing that can be conceived?

NB. I'm an atheist, but I ask this question with all due respect for those that I ask it to. It's one borne of a genuine curiosity and a wish to understand how others view the world, and why.

I would appreciate thoughtful responses.

[Mr Walker]

This is a perennial old timer on UM, which has been discussed many times but remains interesting. Yes of course, humans  have free will. That is inherent in the evolution of our self aware consciousness. We could not evolve such a consciousness without free will, and that consciousness confers, inevitably, free will on all sapient self aware entities.


Ps i live with a real, physical, and poweful god. He has to try and educate, and argue me, into doing as he wishes  because he cant MAKE me be as he wishes me to be.

He uses logic philosophy and common sense.On occasion he can physically interfere, as i can with another human, but that doesnt take away my free will, any more than an act of nature or an act by another human does. EG my free will can only respond to an act of god, or of another human or an act of nature, not override it.

  Gods connection to this is really irrelevant. We DO have free will, and so god has to work around this as best he can. He has his own abilities, ways and means of doing so. But it is basically our free will which defines us as a species. And yes, our possession of free will limit's gods omiscience and omnipotence quite markedly.   it defines the real relationshp which exists between god and individual humans. It is WHY god is often forced to intervene, why humans can act for good and for evil, and why our decisions and the consequences of those decions, are both very important and a great responsibility.

Edited by Mr Walker, 01 June 2012 - 09:40 AM.

[Habitat]

Awright, maybe free will is your try-out as a budding "God", I mean any animate being with free will can and does change the world in it's lifetime,  just maybe  a "test" run for greater responsibility, pass it and you get absorbed into the divinity, abuse it and you don't !

[Mr Walker]

Habitat, on 01 June 2012 - 10:25 AM, said:

Awright, maybe free will is your try-out as a budding "God", I mean any animate being with free will can and does change the world in it's lifetime,  just maybe  a "test" run for greater responsibility, pass it and you get absorbed into the divinity, abuse it and you don't !

Had to like this one. Whether or not it is a test for godhood, with a pass fail mark at the end, it certainly confers on every human the powers and obligations of a god, whether they recognise, or like, that or not.

[libstaK]

I couldn't help thinking "that old chestnut" when I saw the thread title.  Yet there are many members who have yet to have their say on the matter and I remain curious as to what they think.

[Arbenol68]

Thanks for the responses Mr. W and Habitat.
I agree that we do have free will, and possibly for different reasons to yourselves. I don't believe we have it for the reason to pass any test, but I understand this to be a conventional Christian view - ie, have the choice and reap the consequences.

However, my question was:  So, if God is omniscient and omnipresent, do we really have freewill, or is this an illusion? If we can choose, then is it correct to conclude that God is not the greatest thing that can be conceived?

Edited by Arbenol68, 01 June 2012 - 10:45 AM.

[Arbenol68]

libstaK, on 01 June 2012 - 10:38 AM, said:

I couldn't help thinking "that old chestnut" when I saw the thread title.  Yet there are many members who have yet to have their say on the matter and I remain curious as to what they think.

Sorry if it's a bit old. I'm genuinely curious. I don't believe that faith in god and free will are mutually exclusive necessarily, but it doesn't seem to fit with the definition of god as a being nothing can be greater than. For example, Mr. Walker states: "our possession of free will limit's gods omiscience and omnipotence quite markedly." This is exactly what I was asking. Because my next question would be: Is Anselm's definition of God, therefore, wrong?

Edited by Arbenol68, 01 June 2012 - 10:52 AM.

[libstaK]

Arbenol68, on 01 June 2012 - 08:21 AM, said:

This question is primarily for those that believe in the God of the Bible.

Would it be correct to think of God as “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived” (Anselm)?

If so, this implies that he (I'll use 'he' for the sake of convention) is omniscient and omnipresent (as well as omnibenevolent – but I'll leave that one for now). In fact, it more than implies. It becomes imperative that this is so. To me this means he exists outside of cosmological space and time. That he is everywhere, and knows everything – all that was, is and forever will be. If not, then this is not God because I can conceive of a greater being,

The bit that interests me is the 'knowing what will be' bit. He's knows all about us and everyone who ever will be. Beyond this he knows exactly what each of us (and those yet to come) will do and think.

Now, from reading this board it becomes clear that there are many who believe in 'original sin'. That Adam and Eve chose to disobey God. It is also clear that we all have a choice in our conduct. We can choose to sin or not. I know many (if not all) Christians believe we have 'free will' – to choose to obey or not.

It strikes me, that if God already knows what each of us will think and will do, then it makes little difference what we 'choose' to do, because it has already been fated (for want of a better word).

So, if God is omniscient and omnipresent, do we really have freewill, or is this an illusion? If we can choose, then is it correct to conclude that God is not the greatest thing that can be conceived?

NB. I'm an atheist, but I ask this question with all due respect for those that I ask it to. It's one borne of a genuine curiosity and a wish to understand how others view the world, and why.

I would appreciate thoughtful responses.

I think choice and it's parameters, short and long term repercussions are particularly well depicted in the Matrix Trilogy.

We are not making the first ever choice into a free and open future from where we stand right now for instance.  Choices were made through the ages before us (original sin was the penultimate biggie don't you think).  Once a choice is made it becomes the cause for a predictable series of effects, it engenders the next choice or option available to choose which may by a mathematical formula far too advanced for us simple beings to comprehend right now be the predominantly chosen option once made available.

Now you take the problem of choice to that level and the complexity after oh so many thousands of years and choices becomes a little apparent.  So God can see the effect of all this - hardly a surprise but not an argument against us ever having had the freedom to choose in the first place.

What we do have an argument for - is the limit of our understanding of the range of choices available.  The tide of humanity moves almost in unison, in waves.  Gimics, fads, the seven deadlies are all fascinations we can be quite predictably led by - the propaganda and marketing machines of our own modern age are clear examples of the predictability of  particular "target" audiences.

Desire preempts a huge and quite quantifiable range of choices.  It seems to me that we have free will but the problem is we use it to fulfill material desire and it's really not such a huge mystery that doing that will bring into play predictable results.

So to be free and to have free will can very easily be two entirely different things.

[libstaK]

Arbenol68, on 01 June 2012 - 10:51 AM, said:

Sorry if it's a bit old. I'm genuinely curious. I don't believe that faith in god and free will are mutually exclusive necessarily, but it doesn't seem to fit with the definition of god as a being nothing can be greater than. For example, Mr. Walker states: "our possession of free will limit's gods omiscience and omnipotence quite markedly." This is exactly what I was asking. Because my next question would be: Is Anselm's definition of God, therefore, wrong?

Oh no, I think while we are merely utilising our free will rather than experiencing freedom there can be no way to know anything of the fullness of God.

[Leonardo]

Arbenol,

Quote

Is there such a thing as free will?

Do I have a choice in answering that question?

[Bildr]

Some times i tend to see that we don't really choose the destination, but we always have the choice of the roads to take.... since i tend to beleive anyway that what is more important is the road we take the landscape we see on our life than the destination.


By my own spiritual experiences and knowledge path, tend to see ''god''(or whatever you wanna called it... but in my opinion i hate to give a name to something that is more of a force,energy, consciousness, then a physical being, or a beard men in the sky like they like to see it in the bible) and nature as the same thing. Because ''God'' in my own experience is more of a force, an energy,a consciousness of nature, of our universe that bind us, or interconnect us. And since we are made ourselves of this energy, our atoms are energy, our consciousness is energy and we to have the power to create, out of nothing... like new ideas. Like the idea of mens/womens, HUMANS'S right didn't exist before. We created that. Societal structure, our money system, it didn't appeared out of nowhere, we created that. Carl Sagan used to say; ''We are a way for the cosmos(universe) to know itself''.

For myself I don't bind to any tradition, since i tend to find this limiting. They are as many possibility of truth, as many possibility of perception that their is humans on this earth, that their is grain of sand of this earth. The most that i could say is that i inspire myself a lot from a mix of Celtic,Asatru(Nordic Scandinavian paganism), Buddhism and had a part of science of my spirituality but I would never stick to any empirical knowledge, any empirical way to practices, and thus never stick myself to only one tradition since knowledge is always an ever evolving thing. A tradition(like Wicca) can help you find your way, but in the same thing as the bible, or the koran, or any pagan tradition can only be in the end help you find your way out of those MANY multiple possibility to experience...not experience but to create yourself.

All religions were created by man, also written by man, and announced by the man. All sacred texts are only aberrations as long as man does not understand that these texts only serves to put it back on track and that the notion of superiority is false. The only being that man should worship it himself. '' He'' is everything. Man must worship the whole and not a god.

If a designer wanted to give his wisdom to his creation, he would never have written a book. In fact he didn't need, he gave it in the heart of every human. It just takes you and I to see it to understand that we are all divine beings; animals, trees, earth and all that exists.'' [...]

Edited by Bildr, 01 June 2012 - 01:05 PM.

[J. K.]

Human beings have free will and are able to change their actions at any moment.  Yes, God knows what our ultimate choices will be.  However, it is not because God can see into the future; instead, He already exists there.  God is not limited to moment-by-moment existence such as we are.  To God, all of the material world's existence is now.  Even describing it like that is inadequate - our finite minds cannot comprehend it and we don't have the proper vocabulary to express it.

[HavocWing]

Arbenol68, on 01 June 2012 - 10:51 AM, said:

Is Anselm's definition of God, therefore, wrong?

I think 99% of the entire planets definition of god is wrong.

[Mr Walker]

My response is "biased" because i know god as a real physical sapient entity. While a philosophical/ theologicala construct of the nature of god can confer on god any qualities it likes, a real being is limited by the nature of reality and sapience.

  And so, no, a real god cant know the future and cant live  outside of time inncluding in the future because the future does not exist yet.

Actually there are a myriad of potential futures for each of us and multiple myriad of futures for the universe in general. God may well be able to compute every one of those but he cant know which one will solidify into MY/OUR actual future. This concept  when addressed in quantum physics gives rise to the theory of the multiverse where millions of "me" live millions of different lives in millions of diverging/converging universes.

But that is inapplicable to the "real me" because my personal time line is not fixed.  It depends on choices i make nano second by nano second.

Because of the nature of self aware sapience we are not tied to a prexisting past either  as say a rock or a flower is  My past  consisting of a series of free willed choices, allows me every nano second still to make multiple choices about my future.  What i do do, is deliberately and consciously chose my future moment by moment but i have many many choices of the future i chose. Once we reach the present then the past is solidified and cannot be changed, but the next instant of the future and the far future are both/all potentially unlimited.

Because only one time line becomes fixed to form our past, some viewers of time think that this line continues into the future in the same fashion, but it does no,t and there is no logical reason to think that it does or should do so.

I could die right now or live another 30 years. Obviously both those futures create radically different scenarios over time both for me and for many other people connected to me, and there is a multitude of minutes within those two extremes when i could die. A death at any one of those instants creates a different alternative future. And thats only one extreme example. When i turn right instead of left or drink coffee instead of tea, i create an alternative future.

ANd with sapient beings these choices are  often random, chaotic, free willed choices, not dependent on pre-existing decisions or events.or on biologicla or other physicla imperatives. It is a fallacy to see cause and effect as immutable, or our lives as an unbreakable fixed line, from one point in time to another. As sapient self aware beings, we are not just aware of the nature of time and of free will but capable of exercising free will to alter our futures, and disconnect any   natural connection from past to future. We can  dam rivers, make water run up hill, and wind blow backwards to its natural flow. We can create and destroy using conscious choice, and awareness of consequence and cause and effect.  Certainly we can plan and cause changes in our future, using such knowledge and abilities.

  And what we plan and put into effect is not pre determined or immutable, even if sometimes it seems as if it is. That is an illusion created by the fact that we only have the past to judge by. The past is fixed by its nature, but the future bars no resemblance to the past in its nature . First it doesnt even exist yet and second, being non existent, it is physically impossible for it to be fixed in the same way the past is.

Think of a painting and a blank canvas The painting is the past. It cant be changed But the blank canvas represents the future. In a day, or in 100 years, it  MIGHT contain any subject matter at all, and it is impossible to know or predict even if the canvas will still exist, let alone what might be on it at any time in the future. The reality is that one of many pictures may appear on it or it may never be painted on at all. Or it might be destroyed or painted over several times. We dont know and cant know because none of that has happened yet.

ANd, because time is actually a series of discrete moments rather than a connected line, we cant really even use computer extrapolation to predict the future. Each moment is disconnected from all other moments and stands alone in time. In any one nano second the world, or I, could end, or any one  many minor events may occur. Those events are not dependent on prexisting events, they just seem to be, because that is the way the past appears to be. But when the past was the future it wasn't immutable either.There were also, potentially, many different pasts, when they were still futures.

To come back to the analogy of the blank canvas. What eventually appears on it wil be the result of free willed human choice. those choices are Unknown and unknowable at the present time they yhavent even been considered, let alone made, at this point in time. But it will also be the result of conscious planned and self willed decision and action  This is true for ALL human futures We create the future(s) of our choice. They depend on how we decide to choose and act. Huge power and huge responsibility for us; as individuals and as a race, because our decisions affect not just our individaul future, and that of our species, but that of the earth, all its life forms, and perhaps even the future of other planets and life forms.

Edited by Mr Walker, 01 June 2012 - 02:56 PM.

[Arbenol68]

HavocWing, on 01 June 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

I think 99% of the entire planets definition of god is wrong.

But is there a right one?