Sorry I took so long to respond. I was having internet problems. I hope you folks can tolerate another huge post of mine.
First 'dmatic',
I hope you mean that cause this post is enormous!
hmm.. First Logic converted me to Pelagianism (Thanks!), then Jesse converted me to open theism (Thanks!). I'd also like to thank the academy, etc. I've just spent some time thinking about these things and am not an official expert... I've prayed about it... I did read a debate between Bob Enyart and a Calvinist on theologyonline.com that was an excellent argument for open theism. I've been very influenced by Enyart's points I think... I know there is a lot of open theism material out there. You could spend at least a few days straight doing internet research on it and buying books from amazon.com or whatever. I can't really imagine it being a very enjoyable topic until it becomes personal though. The greatest and most compelling insight I believe I have gained is mainly in regards to my relationship with God. It was difficult to consider open theism at first because I thought it meant that God would be stupid or something. Once I understood not only that the future does not exist and God is not stupid for not knowing something that does not exist, but also that it is much more courageous and glorious of God to create free and unpredictable beings, it helped me to begin exploring the genuineness of God's emotions in light of the risks he has taken. Jesse talks about this; about God's expectations for humanity and his utter disappointment with sin, for instance when he decided to flood the world. It has opened up a whole new world of revelation of God's heart. I can't imagine ever wanting to go back to thinking God foreknows all my choices. I'm sure there's a lot more about me that is predictable than a pipsqueak like me realizes but God doesn't foreknow that I will go to hell (or heaven) for instance. It is not set in stone where anyone will end up and that makes our choices in this life much more important. It makes the bible really come alive in a sense because it allows more of the message to get through rather than get squashed by saying "oh God just talks that way because we are finite blah blah" Anyway, you better be careful or you will become brain-washed like me
Right. Something has to have boundaries in order to have an inside or an outside. I would argue that it has to have location in order to have a literal inside or outside also. So if time is somewhere and has boundaries then ok. But if time is not a giant snow-globe then it doesn't have in and out.
First of all, a lot of christians seem to be trained to think that everything they don't immediately understand about God must be an unfathomable mystery. Maybe that's because there have not been enough good teachers? That's my theory. The unfathomable mystery thing is like the perfect cop-out for any teacher who doesn't know what they are talking about right? You could say "wait a sec... isn't that a contradiction..." and they resort to saying, "you are finite God is infinite you will understand when you are dead it is an unfathomable mystery blah blah please insert a quarter to continue..."
Why can't we understand it? I (Benjamin) was. I am. I will be. What is so hard to understand about that? The difference here between God and me is that God ALWAYS was. The other obvious difference is that my continued existence depends on God. I don't see anything here about being outside of time.
The purpose of words (like in the bible) is to communicate ideas. Ideas are only communicated (or shared) through comprehension. If an idea is not comprehended then the words which have expressed the idea have failed in their purpose. If God's words are incomprehensible then they are wasted. God doesn't speak just to hear the sound of his voice. If God wanted to explain that something was too hard for us to understand then he could just say "This thing is too hard for you to understand." God speaks to us because he wants us to understand what he is saying.
That is an interesting example.... You will understand when you are dead. Next!
hahaha just kidding.
My guess is that God made us in such a way that would be compatible with his ability to hear. We may perceive it as being difficult to process but for God, he probably could have designed us to be easy to process for him. How can we know what is difficult for God to process?
Or, if it WAS difficult, maybe an angelic heiarchy serves as an avenue of communication and administration of God's will... I don't know... I don't mean as a mediator between God and man by the way. Just a wild guess.
I understand this type of analogy. I've been thinking about that sort of thing ever since I was reading Stephen Hawking as an adolescent. I've tried to explain that same analogy to people more often than they could take headache pills to deal with me.
I recommend getting as far away from any science-fiction material as possible and giving some serious thought about what a dimension could possibly be before basing any theology on your definition of one. That is only a reasonable thing to do. Who says God needed dimensions in order to make the stars? Just because we conceive of things dimensionally does not mean that things actually need dimensions to exist.
Space can't move because it is nothing. "Nothing" can't do anything. "Nothing" can't even exist. Space is nothing. When we ask what is between two objects in a vaccuum, the answer is "Nothing". Space does not exist. Objects exist at various distances relative to eachother but there is nothing between them or moving everywhere to encompass them. The "distances" between things is not a thing itself. Distance just means that things are not touching eachother, it doesn't mean that space is a thing. Space is nothing. Nothing is not a dimension. Distance and the possibility of motion is inherent in the existence of objects, no dimensions required. Just make stuff and move it around. That's my theory anyway. I apply the same reasoning to time as well.
I agree
ok 'Logic' let's see if I can clear up the misunderstanding. I know some of what I was saying probably sounds crazy on the surface. Also, I'm going to try my best to rip some of your assertions to shreds. I'm sure you won't take it personally.
I'm not advocating that reality is all in our minds. I do understand that objects are real and that objects can really move, change, act, etc. Whether we perceive action or not does not determine whether objects are really acting, moving, changing. Reality is more than perception.
What I was advocating is that when an object acts, moves, changes, etc - this does not cause a "thing" called "the action" or "the motion" or "the change" to pop into existence while the object is changing or moving. The only "thing" that exists is the object. The object may "do things" but the "things it does" are not "things" in the sense that they exist on their own. The only form in which these events exist on their own is in the form of memories. The events truly happen outside of our minds, but happening and existing are two different things. We reify events in order to speak about reality changing or having changed.
Events really do happen, but they don't really exist on their own like objects do. Events are not material, spiritual, or anything like that. If events really existed on their own then God would be responsible for the existence of every event including sin. (Rev 4:11 "...thou hast created all things...") So even though we reify events in our language to talk about them as though they are or were existing "things", they are not, because God created all things. God did not DO all things. And we can DO "things" and then reify the experience we remember. "Things" that we DO and things that ARE, that's two different types of "things".
If God needs time to do things then he would need time to create time. If God never created time he would still need time to be alive. Then God's life would depend on something apart from himself which he did not create. Time would be the god of God.
Ok, but remember, you asked for it!
View #2: God can logically deduce (predict) our future choices based on the perfect knowledge he has of us right now. This is what you seem to believe.
Any such prediction must be a logical deduction or a guess. There is no way to assure that a guess is correct. Therefore accurate knowledge that is predictive must be a result of reasoning rather than a guess. God's foreknowledge would have to be a result of logical deduction. (eg. A=B, B=C, so A=C.)
The reason I said this was nonsense is "such deduction must obey rules which would represent necessitation of the predicted matter."
Logical deduction must obey rules in order to be valid. Even if you have all the right info to start with (perfect knowledge of the present and past) you still have to be logically valid in your conclusions or you will end up with the wrong conclusions. Logical validity means you will follow the rules of logic. You are not free to come up with whatever conclusion you want. For instance: If A=B and B=C, I am not free to say that A is not equal C. It is impossible that A would not be equal C.
The reason logic is effective and reliable is because it follows rules that accurately represent the nature of reality. For instance something cannot exist and not exist simultaneously. This is not because the axioms of logic say so. Logic does not constrain reality, it represents it accurately. Something cannot exist and not exist simultaneously because there is no such thing as simultaneously existing and not existing. That's why it is an absurdity. Not because it surpasses language or reason, because reality is not like that. So our language and reason (which come from God's nature) are totally reliable. They accurately represent reality.
All valid logical conclusions are necessary conclusions. If they are not necessary conclusions then they are only possibilities. Not only do the premises of an accurate logical conclusion need to represent reality but the rules (axioms) used to validly reach an accurate conclusion must also represent reality. If the rules of deduction did not represent reality accurately then our conclusions could never be trusted.
Therefore, if a certain conclusion is necessary based on a given set of information, this necessitation MUST accurately represent reality.
For example: Certain facts about the present necessitate a certain conclusion about the future. The necessity of the conclusion is a result of the rules/axioms/nature of logic. The rules/axioms/nature of logic is a result of it being a mental process that accurately represents reality. Therefore the necessity of the conclusion is an accurate representation of reality.
A more specific example: I jumped into the air. There is gravity. Therefore, I will fall. The reason I conclude that I will fall is because I am obeying the rules of logic. Since the rules of logic only represent reality rather than controlling it, those rules only necessitate my conclusion - not my actual fall. My logic does not make me actually fall. Gravity makes me actually fall. The reason my logic is reliable is because it is accurately representing reality. The reason the conclusion that I will fall is necessary and impossible to avoid is because actually being in the air with gravity necessitates that I will actually fall. The necessary nature of reality is the cause of the result. If the nature of reality was not such that my falling was necessary, for instance, if gravity didn't always work, then the conclusion that I would fall would not be necessary. Logical conclusions are only necessary when the actual reality of the situation could not be otherwise.
Therefore, if God finds the conclusion that a person will sin to be a necessary conclusion, then the reality of the situation must be that the actual sin is unavoidable and necessary. If the sin is truly avoidable and unnecessary, then God's conclusion that the person will sin must be avoidable and unnecessary. If this were not the case then God could not trust his own reasoning because it would not accurately represent the nature of reality. God cannot come to necessary conclusions of an unnecessitated reality. Necessary conclusions represent necessitated reality. Unnecessary conclusions represent unnecessitated reality.
In Calvinist Demonology "god" DOES necessitate all of reality, therefore it IS logically valid for him to come to necessary conclusions about the entire future.
In Christian Theology God does NOT necessitate all of reality, therefore it is NOT logically valid for him to come to necessary conclusions about the entire future.
Conclusions that are unnecessary are not reliable. Unnecessary conclusions are at best possibilities, not reliable facts.
Therefore God does not logically predict the entire future based on his perfect knowledge of the present. He can have perfect knowledge of what IS and still have made the human will is such a way that it is not logically predictable.
If they WILL NOT change, then it is not possible that they WILL change. Why are you talking like a Calvinist?
This is a totally different topic and not very important, but planes are two-dimensional. Lines are one-dimensional. Three axis: X, Y, Z. Three lines. Three-dimensional - 3D. We need two axis(es?) to make a plane. You could say three planes: XY, XZ, YZ. But that just complicates it unnecessarily.
Exactly. If God has exhaustive (yawn...) foreknowledge, he is incapable of genuine loving trust. He is only capable of trust in the sense that he knows the facts, but believing the obvious facts of the future is not virtuous in any sense. There is nothing loving about "trusting" whatever you absolutely know will and must happen. Trust is only loving and thus virtuous when there is the genuine possibility of betrayal. If it is necessarily known that betrayal will not occur, this could only result from it actually being really necessary that betrayal not occur. Betrayal must be impossible in order for knowledge of reliability to be absolutely necessary. This is just like what I was saying above about logical prediction.
If our choices are non-necessitated then God's foreknowledge of our choices is non-necessitated. Non-necessitated foreknowledge or "facts" are not reliable. It is not necessary that the facts are true, only possible at best.
If trust just meant believing the necessary, there would not be anything virtuous about it.
The bible says Love is trusting. (1Cor13:7 [Love] ...believeth all things, hopeth all things...) How can God hope for anything if he knows all that will happen. What a foolish irrational hope that would be! If someone says, "I hope it will be different than I am certain it will be." we could say, "Why? You may desire it be different, but why hope it will be? That is unintelligent. It will not be different. Simply admit you desire it to be different and don't indulge irrational fantasies in vain."
Does our limited knowledge allow us more diversity in manifesting our love than God is capable of?
Are we able to lovingly trust and hope all things while God is only able to amorally know all things?
You admit this by saying "God only trusts (knows when the obedience will be) when ... He should." So you agree with Eliphaz when he said "he putteth no trust in his saints" because you say that God's trust is really just a code-word for his knowledge. "That's right Eliphaz, God doesn't trust his saints, he only knows for certain when they will or won't obey him."
The ExhaustING Foreknowledge "god" could never experience genuine betrayal because he is so full of facts that he can not manage genuine trust or hope. It is pitiable not glorious. It is like a man so strong that he cannot hold a child without hurting it. Or a control freak who cannot tolerate friendship. A god with so much foreknowledge that he cannot experience real love.
Of course God could have necessitated man and thus foreknown all of eternity IF HE WANTED TO. But he decided that he would rather give us free will and experience genuine relationship with his creation. Not some exhaustively boring rehearsal of infinitely old facts. It is far more glorious that God "limited" himself in this way, rather than maintaining some kind of Intellectual Communism where no one but God can produce a new fact of his own. The Exhausting Foreknowledge god (EFG) is not as praiseworthy as God (A&Z) actually is. The EFG is less courageous and risk-taking than the almighty God. The EFG is incapable of the same level of sacrifice and humility. The EFG talks as if he is experiencing genuine relationship with the men and women he created, he makes it sound like he is the A&Z, but it is all just an anthropomorphic poem to express his hyper-transcendant boredom.
Why didn't Solomon just say that? The question is rhetorical. The implication being that there is NO reason for the free will "in the hand of a fool." The meaning is not simply that there is no reason to BE a fool. The ability of the fool "to get wisdom" (free will, the 'price') is the thing implied to be pointless by the proverb. That means that giving that person free will is pointless if they will so abuse it. It means that giving foreknown hell-bound sinners free will does not serve the purpose of affecting the universe in such a way that more people will end up repenting in the long run, which is a repulsive concept. If foreknown sinners were so disposable as that theory suggests then God would have no problem taking pleasure in the death of the wicked seeing as it would serve such a wonderful purpose that he was unwilling to choose any other possible universe. But WHY is the molinist God so uncreative that he could not think up a universe where no one sinned? How long did he spend imagining various possibilities and going "oh wait... scratch that... this one wouldn't turn out so good either... man I wish I could imagine a perfect universe... I guess I'll just pick the best of all the possible universes I can come up with... dude, this is like so annoying..."?
A fool by definition is already responsible. Nothing has to be done to make him so. You can't be a fool without first being responsible. A fool makes himself responsible for his foolishness, not God. It is God's fault that the fool has "the price in...hand...to get wisdom." It is the fool's fault that he is a fool. He would not have been foreknown to be a fool if God had not already decided to give him the "price" (free will). Therefore God did not see that he would be a fool and THEN decide "to make that man responsible." Making a man responsible for his own foolishness is impossible nonsense.
Of course God can do that -- that's what Calvinism is all about!
It would be more consistent to be a Calvinist than to say that we have free will but the future is already settled. What a ridiculous contradiction. Predestination is infinitely more logical.
As I explained way earlier, necessary predictions are only possible in a necessitated reality. So God absolutely can do what you are saying as long as all of our future choices are completely necessitated. His knowledge would not necessitate the future, the necessitated future would necessitate his necessary knowledge. haha...Are you nessing what i'm nessing about?
Your beliefs won't be consistent with your user-name until you become either a Calvinist or an open theist.
"Wrong" Alert! Do not answer question. Full reverse!
wrong wrong wrong - Do you know why I'm going to say this is wrong? Based on what I've asserted about logical prediction? It is NOT ENOUGH merely to have all the facts. Logical prediction requires that reality be necessitated regarding the particular thing being predicted. You need the facts AND a necessitated reality. If all you have is all the facts but the real situation is not necessitated, then your prediction, your conclusion about the future, CANNOT be logically necessary. An unnecessary conclusion or prediction is not reliable.
The word for an unnecessary prediction or conclusion is a GUESS. The EFG (Exhausting Foreknowledge god)is either the Calvinist Demiurge (which they call "God") or a really lucky guesser. This is unavoidable because prediction must either be logical or illogical, necessary or unnecessary, knowledge of the predestined or a guess. There are no other forms of prediction.
So to wrap up the whole thing about different types of knowledge,
The Three Options are...
#1You agree #1 is nonsense. This requires assuming a philosophy of time which treats it like a garage or something that you can walk in and out of. How can this philosophy of time be defended? It is ridiculous. I see these Calvinists cite the Xeno's paradox nonsense in order to say that time must have had a beginning. They say that God could not have experienced an infinite amount of time because he would never have arrived at the present. It would have taken infinitely long... What a bunch of nonsense.
Watch Doug Eaton explain how time is like the garage in which he filmed this video for Lane Chaplin's heresy-tube page. It is surreal when he reveals that he thinks time has an inside. I thought I was going to fall through the looking glass or something. That's between 1:30 and 1:40 in the video. Then right in the middle at 2:50 he "explains" how God could not have existed forever, because, if las vegas was forever away, we could never drive there!
Maybe he got this argument from the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry website. They say:
"If .... time is a property of God's existence, then in order to arrive at the present, this means that an infinite amount of time must have passed in order for us to arrive in the present. But, an infinite amount of time cannot be traversed. Therefore, time must have had a beginning. Since God did not have a beginning, time is not a part of God and God is not restricted by time.
If....time is a property of God's existence, then that means we have traversed an infinite amount of time in order to get to the present. But that is impossible, so time can not be a property of God's existence and nature." ~Matthew Slick, "Refuting" Open Theism
My dad used to show me a riddle like this when I was a little boy. He would ball up a paper napkin and drop it onto the table. Then he would pick it back up to where he had dropped it from and reenact the napkin's fall, holding it the whole time. He would say, "at some point the napkin reaches half-way down to the table" and hold it there at halfway through the distance it had fallen. Then he would move it halfway through the remaining distance and repeat this process until I thought "Gee, it'll just keep cutting the distance in half and never reach the table!" hahahaha
Anyway, the napkin did reach the table and God HAS been forever. Trying to divide a finite distance into an infinite number of parts is why the napkin thing is funny, and trying to quantify or imagine existing forever is why that argument against open theism is funny. They could just say "God can't be eternal.... 'cuz..... that would take too long!"
Ok, that's enough picking on that idea. Now to pick apart what you were advocating.
The second possible type of foreknowledge:
#2#2 you asked me to rephrase. I've probably rephrased it way more times than you were hoping I would!
But there you have it my friend:
the two types of prediction are....
1) logically necessary conclusions and,
2) guesses.
Conclusions are only logically necessitated when the portion of reality they are dealing with is necessitated.
You understood and agreed to this in a different section. Here is our dialogue:
Then I said the same thing that I said in point #2 about predictive knowledge.
Then you said:
I said that prediction requires that the actual outcome obey some law of necessity.
And you said that makes sense.
But that contradicts free will. What does the word "free" in "free will" mean if not freedom from any necessitating laws? If laws of necessity controlled our wills instead of them being free of any such control then Calvinism would be true.
You advocated one of the fundamental beliefs of Calvinism, that the future is settled. Since you have no problem believing that the future is set in stone, you have no problem believing that the EFG can make logical predictions about it.
If you want to believe the future is set in stone then you would be more consistent as an extreme Calvinist.
Nevertheless, if someone realizes all of this and still feels compelled to worship the EFG and defend his Ipecac-like attributes they can always completely forsake reason and invent some kind of "middle knowledge" (other than direct experience and reason) which ain't in the middle of anything except a joke. This is what I mockingly referred to as "mystery knowledge" here:
#3 The last resort.
You assert that the EFG's foreknowledge is an effect of a future cause. I'm guessing it is easy to refute the theory that cause and effect can be a two-way street in a single reality. How did you come to the conclusion that cause and effect can work in two directions? Are you sure that is possible? Is it just because there is no other way to defend the EFG?
Let's assume that cause and effect CAN work in two directions. Let's assume that it is possible for causes to come after their effects (I wonder what that does to theistic apologetics...). If our future choices can cause an effect in the EFG's mind infinitely back in the past, which you call foreknowledge, then the effect would extend to the EFG's memories as well as foreknowledge, unless he can't remember having foreknowledge in the past. If the EFG can remember his past foreknowledge as well as experience his current foreknowledge, then his memories of his past foreknowledge are an effect of our future choices as well. This is the unavoidable result of saying that the EFG's foreknowledge is an effect and our future choices are the cause. It makes some of his memories an effect of the same future cause.
Not only is it silly to believe that things we haven't done yet have already caused God's memories, this whole idea of reversing cause and effect means that we are responsible for some of the eternal uncreated attributes of God. If God has always foreknown my future choices then the facts of my future choices have always existed in God's mind. Those facts are an uncreated divine attribute which you say that I am responsible for. Since cause and effect can go in reverse, I can be the cause of a divine attribute. Sounds wrong to me.
You could say that knowledge is an attribute but the particular facts are not attributes, only instances of knowledge but, besides being word games, it would not matter. I still would be the cause of something eternal and thus uncreated (foreknown facts). My own choices will/have helped to define the reality of God's eternal mind. I don't think so... Do you?
Perhaps you could say that God did not foreknow all these things until he decided to create this universe. Then the effects of my future choices would not extend back into infinity making me the cause of part of God's eternal mind. This brings us back to the fact that the more consistent way to believe in the EFG is to be a Calvinist.
Calvinists have no problem with any of this because they believe the future is set in stone. But those who acknowledge the human will and moral accountability are able to understand that the future cannot be set in stone. The future cannot be settled. The future must have multiple possibilities. Our future choices must not be settled.
God's knowledge accurately represents reality. Therefore, if our future choices are foreknown, the knowledge of them cannot be settled, cannot be certain, set in stone, unable to be changed. Because the future of reality is not set in stone and unable to change.
If the future is set in stone, then it cannot be otherwise. If our future choices are already settled, then they cannot be otherwise. If we can only make one set of choices, this is no choice at all. The settled future idea makes freedom of the will a lie. If freedom is a lie then moral accountability is a lie. If moral accountability is a lie then the guilt of sin is a lie. If the guilt of sin is a lie then Jesus dying for us would be a lie. The future must not be settled. It must be open to different possibilities or the whole gospel is just a circus show like it is in Calvinism. If the future is set in stone then even God is not free like Jesse has explained. If God foreknows what he will choose, then he is not free to choose otherwise. If God is not free to choose otherwise then his choices are not virtuous. It all leads to a bunch of blasphemy. Exhaustive foreknowledge robs God of his freedom and righteousness. The EFG is a lie.
The EFG is the lie that supports the whole Calvinist system of heresy. Watch them scramble to refute open theism as if IT is the dangerous heresy. No EFG = no Calvies. No Calvies = no Christianized Elitism. No Christianized Elitism = No Eugenics/Globalist funds for churches. Save the world, be open to open theism.
AMEN. That is what I am saying.
Oh! I found the box of reality! Here it is, surrounded by eight other boxes.
Obviously the one in the middle is reality. Why else would it be in the middle? haha
I can't believe it if you guys read this whole thing... I learn a lot thinking through all this while I'm writing, so I don't mind getting so verbose. Please let me know if it would be helpful for me to shorten any of these explanations.
PS - In case anyone doesn't know anything about me, I believe that a Calvinist or EFG defender can be a Christian as long as they don't live according to their belief in a frozen future. I've previously believed most of the things that I've made fun of in this post. I know it's possible to just be mistaken. Being mistaken is not a sin. It is something to be delivered from! Like when 'Logic' delivered me from thinking I was born a sinner
'Logic' is like Morpheus from The Matrix, saving all these people from a false reality.