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Bella, you know there is a love higher than the love of dogs. But even for that matter, animals do have some choice. They may not be free moral agents knowing good and evil the way we are, but they do have some choice.
When I call my cats, sometimes they come. When they hear me opening a can to put fresh food in their dishes, usually they will come. They choose to be very affectionate and like to be near where I am.
One of my cats had a broken fang. Sherlock would flinch whenever I touched it, so it must have hurt. It required dental surgery to fix it. Total cost was $700. But Sherlock was worth it to me. He was very resistant to being put in a pet carrier, and cried all the way to the vet, and all the way back home again the next day. But a few weeks later, when he was fully healed, he would climb up in my lap, place his front paws on my chest, and rub his mouth (the side that had been operated on) against my cheek. This was something he had never done before. He seemed to know that I was responsible for getting the problem he had fixed.
I am convinced that most animals are alot more like we are than we realize. They have minds, for one thing. They can love--sometimes more purely than we do. They can grieve, too. And nothing causes them more grief than the loss of the human they were bonded to. And they can make choices. They do it all the time.
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Well, perhaps it would've been better if he'd stopped there.
One Christian meme I very much agree with: our mortal life is, in a sense, pathetic and terribly limited. Creating us was like intentionally fathering badly crippled children.
You are assuming we are "done". Babies are pretty "crippled" if we think that they will stay that way.
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quote:You are assuming we are "done". Babies are pretty "crippled" if we think that they will stay that way.
In that case, we'd better all "grow up" to transcend our limits -- not just a few of us who are saved at the expense of the others. Hence, Universalism.
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God did not create us crippled to begin with. The first man was perfect, and he was given a perfect wife. Their wrong choices messed things up for all of us. God has also promised to restore us to perfection in the end. "Then the lame shall leap like a deer, And the tongue of the dumb sing...." (Isaiah 35:6; NKJV)
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quote:And nothing causes them more grief than the loss of the human they were bonded to. And they can make choices. They do it all the time.
*sigh* Nothing? Sure of that, are you? How? I'm somewhat certain you'll write this off as one of your critics just questioning you and not as a question holy Ron actually needs to answer, but how do you know this? How do you know how 'pure' an animal's love or how painful its grief is? Or the measure of its mind, or the power of its bond?
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If God is inserting prophecy into the Bible - that is he has foreknowledge of events - then it can be argued he is violating the free will of some (theological fatalism) in that if at time t he knew that X would do something at time t+u, then it's hard to see how X had a choice in the matter.
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Rakeesh, please knock off the "holy Ron" stuff.
I know these things by the examples I have seen and heard of. Also by the testimony of Ellen G. White, whom most of us Seventh-day Adventists believe passed all the Biblical tests for a genuine prophet. She said:
quote:The intelligence displayed by many dumb animals approaches so closely to human intelligence that it is a mystery. The animals see and hear and love and fear and suffer. They use their organs far more faithfully than many human beings use theirs. They manifest sympathy and tenderness toward their companions in suffering. Many animals show an affection for those who have charge of them, far superior to the affection shown by some of the human race. They form attachments for man which are not broken without great suffering to them." (Ministry of Healing, pp. 315, 316)
You might also find instructive the experience of Baalim and his donkey--to whom God temporarily gave the power of speech: Numbers 22:28-33. Notice that in this exchange, God was not speaking for the donkey. The donkey was speaking her own thoughts.
[ January 20, 2011, 05:54 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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quote: No, Chris. You may think you are being logical, but you are not. You are just rationalizing...
Yeah Chris, stop trying to be logical by thinking in a rational way. You need to feel logic through God's love, parables, and the acceptance of a man's authority who testifies of his own relationship with God.
Quit squirming and start accepting. Geesh...why don't you get it? My heart weeps for your soul.
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natural_mystic, actually you have stumbled across one of the main reasons why God couches most of the prophecies of the Bible in symbols. Since "spiritual things are spiritually discerned," those who reject spiritual things are not likely to understand the prophecies rightly. And so many people will come along with their own private interpretations, that in most cases, those prophesied about will not understand what destiny has really been foreseen.
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Do you disagree with my content? Isn't that what you are saying? You have not demonstrated HOW Chris is not being logical. You are asking him to get closer to God so he can know the truth. Can you elaborate? I am open to self correction if I am misunderstanding you.
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lem, rationalizing is not the same thimg as being rational. Logic is not something you feel. I do not advocate acceptance of man's authority, but I do have the right to give my personal testimony.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: lem, rationalizing is not the same thimg as being rational. Logic is not something you feel. I do not advocate acceptance of man's authority, but I do have the right to give my personal testimony.
Only insofar as your testimony describes how you see God, not as a means to convert people or invite them to repent. So far, I think you are on the correct side of that line, but I just wanted to caution you on crossing it.
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quote:The Rabbit, none of those things you suggest logically follow. You are just playing word games.
Ron, this is where many of your arguments die. You dismiss earnest arguments with statements about the character of those arguments rather than addressing the actual arguments. It may be apparent to you that what Rabbit has presented is a "word game" but it is by no means apparent to me. You did the same thing when I tried to get you to define how you measure information so we could test your claim about mutation not being capable of producing new information.
Please identify the actual non sequitur in Rabbit's argument.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: God did not create us crippled to begin with. The first man was perfect, and he was given a perfect wife. Their wrong choices messed things up for all of us. God has also promised to restore us to perfection in the end. "Then the lame shall leap like a deer, And the tongue of the dumb sing...." (Isaiah 35:6; NKJV)
Ron, when you refer to perfection, do you mean physically or spiritually. You could argue that if Adam and Eve were spiritually perfect they would not have eaten the fruit in the first place.
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quote:If God is inserting prophecy into the Bible - that is he has foreknowledge of events - then it can be argued he is violating the free will of some (theological fatalism) in that if at time t he knew that X would do something at time t+u, then it's hard to see how X had a choice in the matter.
An interesting problem to think about. The only choices we have control over are choices in the present. Our past choices are locked in stone (but still ours, because we and no one else made them), and our future choices are out of reach.
If someone has the ability to look into the future and see our future choices, though ... does that make those choices any less ours? Or does it simply turn those future choices into the equivalent of past choices — out of our reach to change, but still 100% determined by us?
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If they are out of reach, how are they determined 100% by us? This is why I love being an Atheist. Not because it's easier, but because I can sleep at night knowing that such questions are nonsense- they might as well never be asked.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: If they are out of reach, how are they determined 100% by us? This is why I love being an Atheist. Not because it's easier, but because I can sleep at night knowing that such questions are nonsense- they might as well never be asked.
Whereas I enjoy these questions because if there is a God as I suppose, then finding the answer should be possible. Finding answers that fit the data I've got is something I find stimulating. Failing to find the answer leads me to look in places I might not have considered looking at in the first place. I win either way.
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Being an atheist bars you even from considering such questions from a science-fictional point of view? How dull.
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quote: lem, rationalizing is not the same thimg as being rational. Logic is not something you feel.
Since I freely admit I was being snide, I am awaiting a response to HOW Chris was a "rationalizing" per the accepted definition when you said "You may think you are being logical, but you are not. You are just rationalizing, trying to squirm and dance around the real significance of the things I have pointed out."
I am sincerely interested in your response because he seemed thoughtful and logical to me. I got no sense of him squirming. If my mind is also flawed I would like you to point it out by showing WHAT Chris did wrong or HOW his thinking or approach is not logical.
That will help me in my own self assessment.
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Look at a choice you made in the past. It is definitely your choice. You remember making it. But because it's in the past, you can't RE-make it or UN-make it. It's completely fixed. But it's still your choice, because in the moments during which the choice was made, it was you and only you who was doing the choosing.
How is an observable future choice any different? It might seem unfair to have a future choice locked in stone, but if that observed choice is still based on a chain of influences and decisions during the intervening time that involved YOU, then the choice is still yours, even if you don't remember making it.
An observed future choice is kind of like a forgotten past choice. It's out of reach, and you can't recall the circumstances, but the choice was still made by you.
Maybe. Still thinking about it I'd love to hear a counterargument.
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You haven't made the choice yet, but nothing you do can change the choice. The choice is pre-determined by factors out of your control, otherwise it would not be possible to see the results of the choice until after the choice has happened. The specific choice you makes becomes a necessary component to the existence of the universe, and so there is no possibility that you make a different choice.
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quote:The specific choice you makes becomes a necessary component to the existence of the universe, and so there is no possibility that you make a different choice.
But the same is true of your past choices, and they're still yours. If the same factors that apply to your present choices (who you are, your desires, your perspective on the world, your interpretation of events) also determine the choice you observed in the future, then isn't that future choice also yours? Does the fact that you don't remember making it mean that the "you" of the future who DID determine the choice is not legitimately you?
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quote:The choice is pre-determined by factors out of your control ...
Actually, I think THIS line is what I'm really questioning. How are the factors out of your control? The person who made the future choice IS you. Future you, but still you. You're the only one who controlled it.
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Interestingly enough -- to me, anyway -- I was playing with these arguments in my NaNoWriMo novel last year. A brutal dictator has taken over, and scientists, soldiers and just desperate people keep traveling back in time to kill his grandfather. Only my story is from the POV of the grandfather, who at this stage is a teenager in the 80s who has no idea why people keep showing up, shooting him ineffectively, and disappearing. Made for a lot of arguing.
quote:"But that would mean that history is fated and can't be changed, so time travel should be impossible anyway."
"Lot of people agree with you, son."
Mitch thought about that for a couple of miles as the scenery trundled by. All of time as a fixed thing, with all events already having happened somewhen. Everything preordained. It would have to be like that for prophecy to work, wouldn't it? Mitch's faded Baptist upbringing argued strongly in favor of it, as did other religions, most mythology and all fortune cookies. But that meant no free will, right? How can you be said to have chosen a course of action if you were always going to have made that choice? Or was your freely-chosen option part of the plan?
Like in the movie "The Goonies," he thought. The choice to send Chunk for help was a turning point, even if they didn't know it at the time, 'cause otherwise he wouldn't have met Sloth and they all woulda been killed or lost their houses or something. But they did, and the movie's already finished, with the ending and everything, so if I'm watching them make that choice in the middle, the consequences of their choice to send the fat kid already exist and I could see the ending if I could fast-forward. But as far as the characters know, they're making their own choices. Maybe time is just a matter of perspective from someone else's point of view, someone who could see the ending, like God or Doctor Who or somebody. Did it matter? Was thinking and acting like you had free will the same thing as actually having it?
That would mean that he, Mitch, was acting out a script someone had already written, and that anything he considered free will was already accounted for. Mitch wondered who was watching, and whether he'd get picked up for next season.
"I don't like it," he said finally.
Willie Jim, who had started to doze off from lack of sleep and incipient detox depression, jerked awake. "More waffles?" he muttered sleepily.
"I don't think everything is destined. I think we can change things," Mitch told him, unknowingly dismissing predestination, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and thousands of years of theological arguments in one fell swoop.
(End of self-indulgent post)
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How is an observable future choice any different? It might seem unfair to have a future choice locked in stone, but if that observed choice is still based on a chain of influences and decisions during the intervening time that involved YOU, then the choice is still yours, even if you don't remember making it.
Because knowing that a choice has been made in the locked future affects your choices now. If you know you'll die alone and unloved 20 years from now, maybe you won't bother trying to find love in the first place (which, in any reliable time travel story. is what caused you to die alone). It's not the unchangeable future that causes the problem; it's the knowledge of it.
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Then if someone ELSE observes your future, and doesn't tell you anything about it, is there a problem at all? Or is your future still yours to determine?
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Ron, you have proclaimed, basically, that the amazing accuracy of Biblic prophecy proves that the Bible is accurate.
This despite the fact that many clear prophecies made in the Bible either have not come true or were flatly wrong, and many of the ones that have reportedly come true were vague enough that they could be answered with any of a number of events (easily seen by how different groups of believers have argued over which events the verses referred to).
And so many apologists have used such wishy-washy arguments such as the ones I detailed in my earlier post: some were not truly prophecies but metaphors, some were meant to be interpreted thusly, etc. Always a reason, no matter how tortured, as to why a given prophecy was not wrong because the apologists start from the premise that everything in the Bible is accurate. Amazingly enough, once all the inconveniently inaccurate prophecies are safely dismissed, leaving only the ones that came true in some interpreted fashion, the Bible seems incredibly accurate indeed.
If we're going to be logical, we cannot start from that premise. We cannot start from any premise. The Bible must be treated to the same rigorous testing as any other work purporting to predict the future.
What is different between you and me, I suspect, is that you have felt the immanence and reality of God, and I have not. That touch, I think, gives you the surety you're trying to get across, the certainty that of course the Bible is real, and the bewilderment that I can't see it too.
I frankly don't see any way for me to change your mind because it would mean turning your back on the certainty you've experienced, and from your point of view you have absolutely no reason to and every reason in the world not to.
But I have not had that experience, nor do I believe it exists in any objective manner. You are, to me, every bit as convincing as anyone in any other faith would be to you. How would you react to someone arguing the undeniable truth of the Qu'ran, which, except for these verses which have deeper meanings and these verses which are really just parables, perfectly fulfills prophecy concerning the entire outline of history?
To actually convince me, you would have to argue and prove your points on my terms, and that means skepticism and non-scriptural proof.
[ January 21, 2011, 12:13 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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Geoffrey: In that scenario my free will is intact, in every way that matters to me. As in my Goonies analogy -- and how often does one get to say that -- the people making the decisions feel them to be real, whether someone watching knows how it ends or not. And that means those decisions matter.
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I'm sort of curious how we'd be able to tell the difference.
With a working time machine, or some other way to see the future in a fixed way. Then once some aspect of that future has been seen and recorded, you experiment with trying to change it.
[ January 20, 2011, 09:58 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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The other method would be with a clearly defined prophecy that came true in an undeniable way. This prophecy would need to be specific so that only one event could fulfill it, made well in advance of that event or anything that could lead to the event (ideally made by someone with no prior knowledge of anything eventually involved in the event), and verifiable as to its age and legitimacy.
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quote:Then if someone ELSE observes your future, and doesn't tell you anything about it, is there a problem at all?
Well, it depends. If you believe there is a difference between the illusion of free will and actual free will, yes, there's a problem (assuming that hypothetical someone else is theoretically able to do something that would change your future.)
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Ron, I see no reason to since you routinely refuse to address direct, plainly worded questions. Such as Rabbit's, to which you replied with scorn, because she hadn't embraces the proper religious perspective.
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quote:Originally posted by Geoffrey Card: Orincoro:
Being an atheist bars you even from considering such questions from a science-fictional point of view? How dull.
No, I chose my words carefully. Being an athiest doesn´t *do* anything for me. However, I am happy to be quite sure that these fake dilemmas constitute a tautological nightmare designed to scare me into believing, even though that doesn´t help. And no, the question phrased in your way holds zero interest for me in an intellectual sense because it is total nonsense.
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No one is "designing" anything to scare you into anything. A subject came up that interested me and I wanted to talk about it. You dismissed it, saying, essentially, that because you were an atheist, you were too good, somehow, to be interested in the stuff I was interested in discussing.
Personally, I don't understand what you're trying to prove about yourself, but I don't think it's working. However haughty and dismissive you are about the subject at hand, saying you're certain that people are out to trick you when they're clearly not does not result in them being impressed by your insight.
posted
Actually, I'm really not even sure how this thing I'm talking about is supposed to have any effect on anyone's belief. It's just a way to look at the question of the impact of foreknowledge on freedom. It doesn't argue one way or the other on the question of religion. Sure, the subject of foreknowledge comes up a lot in religious discussions, but the direction I'm going with it is kind of irrelevant, as far as I can tell.
Can you step me through the logical path you think I'm trying to lead you down?
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"Actually, I think THIS line is what I'm really questioning. How are the factors out of your control? The person who made the future choice IS you. Future you, but still you. You're the only one who controlled it. "
I didn't control it, though, if a necessary component of the universe is me making a certain choice at a certain time.
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Before the choice was observed, it could potentially have been anything, and it wasn't necessary for a particular choice to be made at that particular time.
But at the moment it was observed, someone was making the choice — and I think we have to conclude that that person was you. You made the choice out of time order — normally, you would have made all the previous choices first — but the person making the choice (and all the intervening choices that led there) at the time of observation was you.
It seems a bit like your life is being fast-forwarded without your knowledge. Instead of making one choice at a time, one moment at a time, you make a whole series of choices in an instant as the future is suddenly set into stone. As long as you aren't made aware of the observation, it doesn't seem like there ought to be a difference between making each choice one at a time, and making them all at once and then acting them out. In both cases, the choices are still determined by who you are, so they're still yours.
It seems like in this model, if the observer interacts with you, his observation will probably be made invalid. But as long as the observer is insulated from you, his observation can simultaneously be accurate and not interfere with your freedom.
Someone viewing your future from the present and being insulated from you is indistinguishable from someone viewing your future from the future (by just being there). In both cases, all the intervening choices are yours, and they can't change them. It's only when you start talking about being informed about (or otherwise affected by) your own future that it gets paradoxical ...
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"Before the choice was observed, it could potentially have been anything, and it wasn't necessary for a particular choice to be made at that particular time."
But "before," is meaningless in this context, because the choice is observed, in the time line of the actor, before he makes the choice. So, in the time line of the actor, his decision is made before he makes the decision. The outcome is fixed before he can make a choice, and so he HAS no choice. By the time, in his time line, he gets to the point where he will make the choice, the universe had already contained the information that he will make a certain choice.
I'm not saying that the choice didn't come from internal to the actor, I'm saying that there's no possibility he could make another choice, and therefore the word "choice," is misleading. There IS no choice. THere's only one possible outcome, which means there is no freedom to choose differently, and without that possibility, its not correct to say we have freedom to choose.
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quote:But as long as the observer is insulated from you, his observation can simultaneously be accurate and not interfere with your freedom.
Are we agreed, however, that no Christian depiction of God constitutes a scenario in which God -- the observer -- is sufficiently insulated for this to be universally true?
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You people keep confusing free will and non-determinism. There's nothing in the definition of those words that makes free will incompatible with determinism.
In fact I could argue that free will REQUIRES determinism. Like Spock said "if I let go of a hammer on a planet that has a positive gravity, I need not see it fall to know that it has in fact fallen." He said that to explain why he trusted Kirk to act in an honorable manner. Do you think he was disparaging Kirk, by calling him predictably honorable? No, he was *honoring* Kirk. Spock could rely on Kirk to act altuistrically, bravely, honorably.
That humans decide their actions based on their natures and desires is BOTH what provides them with free will, AND what makes them deterministic and predictable.
That someone else (whether God, or a mindreader, or a timetraveller) can predict your actions is an attribute of *their* state of mind, not yours. Their knowledge about your actions is part of *their* being, not yours. If you have free will, whether someone else knows or doesn't know that you'll do, doesn't affect the existence of *your* free will. It might affect *theirs*.
Someone else's knowledge is part of *their* mind, not yours.
quote:If you believe there is a difference between the illusion of free will and actual free will, yes, there's a problem
I believe there's a difference, but I don't believe there's a problem.
There's a difference between the illusion and actual free will -- e.g. if you you were drugged or hypnotized into following someone else's desires and into rationalizing your actions away, you'd have the illusion of free will, but not actual free will.
That's a significant difference, but there's still not a problem with e.g. a time-traveller being able to know what you're going to do.
Determinism and free will are absolutely compatible.
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The difference, of course, is that in the God scenario we're also presuming that this observer has the ability to alter the circumstances leading up to your deterministic choice, thus artificially altering your set of available options.
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Well certainly, if God tells you what your choice *would* have been, then to have free will you must be able to use that knowledge you were given to change your decision. If you want.
But God would also be capable to predict in which circumstances you will indeed so want, and in which cases you will not want.
Either way, free will isn't really affected. God either gives you information and you use your free will to incorporate the new information in your decision process as you will, or he doesn't give you information, and you use your free will to act in ignorance.
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quote:Well certainly, if God tells you what your choice *would* have been, then to have free will you must be able to use that knowledge you were given to change your decision. If you want.
It's more insidious than that. God can arrange it so that the only choices open to you are the choices He wants you to pick; in fact, He can deprive of you meaningful choice by simply arranging the universe appropriately.
You're still choosing "freely," but you are choosing only what He wanted you to choose.
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posted
If a father puts a cookie jar on a table within the reach of his son, and he knows his son well enough to realize that his son will definitely take a cookie from the jar if he places the cookie jar there, isn't it still the son's choice to take the cookie? The father knows what the future choice will be, but its still the son's choice.
If you have perfect understanding of a person, then you can perfectly predict what he will freely choose to do, without taking away his freedom to choose. Why does the free will discussion need to be any more complicated than that?
The only tricky part is when you assign blame for the result of the choice. Is the son to blame for choosing to eat the cookie? Or is the father to blame for putting the cookie there knowing that the son would eat it? But this is only tricky if you assume blame must go to one or the other. If you don't assume that, then in cases like this, full blame goes to both.
There is nothing unique to God about this though. Its a common everyday thing for one person to "set up" another person to make a given choice. We may not have perfect knowledge of how the other person will respond like God could, but in many cases we are quite sure.
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Ron, you have proclaimed, basically, that the amazing accuracy of Biblic prophecy proves that the Bible is accurate.
This despite the fact that many clear prophecies made in the Bible either have not come true or were flatly wrong....
I deny that this is true. Give me a specific example. Name for me one "clear prophecy" (as you said) of the Bible that has been flatly wrong. Make sure you interpret the prophecy in a manner that is not based merely on subjective imagination, but is based on sound scholarship--including allowing the Bible alone to define all its symbols and terms; allowing the context to indicate what time in history the prophecy is to be applied to; and being careful to avoid taking literally what is figurative, and avoid taking as figurative what is literal--using reasonable methods of literary analysis, including checking to see how the term or symbol is used elsewhere in Scripture.
Name any "clear prophecy" that you think has failed. Any single prophecy. Anything in Daniel, Zechariah, Joel, Malachi, Matthew, the epistles of Paul, Revelation, or anywhere else prophecy may be found. I think you have been misled about this by popular teachings of some denominations or modern writers that are not Biblically sound. Please allow me to demonstrate.
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: If a father puts a cookie jar on a table within the reach of his son, and he knows his son well enough to realize that his son will definitely take a cookie from the jar if he places the cookie jar there, isn't it still the son's choice to take the cookie? The father knows what the future choice will be, but its still the son's choice.
Except the father in this scenario did not create his son in the same way that it is suggested that God created Adam in Genesis. Nor is the father in the hypothetical omnipotent. He learned over time the things his son would or wouldn't do in certain scenarios. He did not know everything his son would do before his son was born, and have the ability to alter any or all of it at a whim.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Make sure you interpret the prophecy in a manner that is not based merely on subjective imagination, but is based on sound scholarship--including allowing the Bible alone to define all its symbols and terms...
Ron, you stated a few pages ago, and may have forgotten, that this follows logically from the assumption that all of scripture was inspired by the One Divine Mind. You have yet to explain why one should make this assumption to begin with. Personally, I don't see why Chris should have to answer your question within your parameters until you convince him to accept this beginning axiom.
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quote:Except the father in this scenario did not create his son in the same way that it is suggested that God created Adam in Genesis. Nor is the father in the hypothetical omnipotent. He learned over time the things his son would or wouldn't do in certain scenarios. He did not know everything his son would do before his son was born, and have the ability to alter any or all of it at a whim.
Do those things make a difference in the question of whether a choice can still be a choice if someone knows how you will choose beforehand?
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I'd love to hear a counterargument.
