Predestination

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Phagocyte
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20 Aug 2008, 5:07 pm

Hmm...

God plays dice.

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Malsane
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20 Aug 2008, 5:09 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Not really, such a view does not undermine God having personal characteristics, only states that God does not have a libertarian free will, as this is a Christian conceptualization of God, that I think stems from Peter Abelard(I got the reference from a book by Liebniz that I read quite a while ago, so I do not remember for certain). I mean, does a non-libertarian concept of man undermine man's ability as an agent? I don't tend to think so.

I think I see what you're saying, but I'm still a bit confused. If I don't have free will, how can I act any different from gravity, just following causality? Although, my personal idea of free will is that it does not exist in a vacuum. There are things that influence your decisions. Is that sort of what you're saying?

Arr, free-will is always a sticky discussion.

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20 Aug 2008, 5:13 pm

Malsane wrote:

Well, the issue is that despite the fact that you don't have free will, you still are human and have a phenomenal characteristic and an internal perspective that gravity doesn't. Even though you follow causal rules, to say that you are the same as a rock would be too reductionist.

Free will is a tricky discussion, especially given that it is necessary to give weight to human beings while still respecting the impersonal physics.

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20 Aug 2008, 7:30 pm

Even if free will does not exist, for all practical purposes, we act like it does, by our perception.

Just like even though most of the atom is empty space, we act as if things were solid because of our perception. Or like the fact that food is enjoyable even know we know that it's just an evolutionary trick to get us nourished with carbohydrates, amino acids, fats, minerals and other nutrients. Or that we can go on thinking even though we know they are just neural signals firing.

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20 Aug 2008, 7:33 pm

I believe God has intended for me to stay in bed tomorrow, and not go to work.

DentArthurDent
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20 Aug 2008, 7:39 pm

Ok I'm very new to all this(I have just read briefly on causality for the first time)! For predestination to exist alongside causality would that need an infinite number of gods.

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Awesomelyglorious
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20 Aug 2008, 7:43 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

Ok I'm very new to all this(I have just read briefly on causality for the first time)! For predestination to exist alongside causality would that need an infinite number of gods.

I do not understand that position.

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20 Aug 2008, 7:54 pm

As I said I am REALLY new to this concept. My thinking goes something like this causality is basically A causing B to happen, with lots of different variants depending upon situation and concept. So for a god to make the universe in a predestined way, what caused god.

AG Im am obviously struggling here, I do not see how causality and predestination can exist together

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20 Aug 2008, 8:22 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

Right, A causes B.

God(s) usually is described as the beginning of the causal chain, or the first cause. Nothing is described as causing God(s), unless the mythology says so.

Predestination is really just a subset of causality to some extent.

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20 Aug 2008, 8:31 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Predestination is really just a subset of causality to some extent.

If life is predestined how can causality exist. And in a universe governed by causality can god exist without a cause

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20 Aug 2008, 8:38 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Predestination is really just a subset of causality to some extent.

If life is predestined how can causality exist. And in a universe governed by causality can god exist without a cause

If everything is subject to causality, then predestination follows because all occurrences are part of a string of causation, thus everything that will ever be is determined by the initial conditions.

God, in Christian theology at least, is not considered as being governed by any of the laws of the universe, because He created them, how could God be subject to His own creation? Plus, it's normally considered to be God who''s doing the predestining.

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DentArthurDent
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20 Aug 2008, 8:42 pm

Orwell wrote:

If life is predestined how can causality exist. And in a universe governed by causality can god exist without a cause

Orwell wrote:

God, in Christian theology at least, is not considered as being governed by any of the laws of the universe, because He created them, how could God be subject to His own creation? Plus, it's normally considered to be God who''s doing the predestining.

OK so where did god come from?

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20 Aug 2008, 8:43 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

If life is predestined how can causality exist. And in a universe governed by causality can god exist without a cause

Yes, because god is often described as the first cause, as I already typed out in the post you were just quoting. How god can be the first cause you may ask? Well, this is based upon the notion of a timeless existence, which perhaps could also be understood as an equal amount of existence throughout all times, but also an existence not predicated upon by time. The notion is found in Christian theology to a great extent, and probably throughout a lot of monotheistic theology in general given how much the philosophical ideas gotten were based upon the Greeks.

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20 Aug 2008, 8:45 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

OK so where did god come from?

You might not need this after I already explained timeless existence, however, the idea is that God needs no cause as he has always been.

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20 Aug 2008, 8:52 pm

What an incredibly convenient way to deny science

ToadOfSteel
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20 Aug 2008, 8:57 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

What an incredibly convenient way to deny science

It's not necessarily denying science. Current scientific theory says that time as we observe it should not exist beyond the space-time continuum of this universe. Even the most experimental parts of M-theory can only hypothesize about what existed "before" the Big Bang (the word "before" is in quotes because, as I said, time did not exist before it), and since the physical laws which govern the universe did not exist at that point either, you can't exactly throw Occam's Razor at it either...

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