The Question Islam and Christianity Can't Answer

[It Aint Necessarily So]

In short, what God knows has NOTHING to do with what humans can or cannot choose to do, NOTHING.

You keep repeating that, but never explain how it is possible to know how the future will unfold and also possible for people to freely make decisions.

Yet no nonbeliever can tell me WHY my belief is illogical

Yes, I know.

I have explained over and over and over again why their belief is illogical.

Not to me. You just keep reasserting that the impossible is possible. You just keep saying that God knows all but we still have freedom to do other than what God foresees.

God does not predict what is going to happen although God knows what is going to happen because God is all-knowing.

Those are the same thing if the prediction is always correct.

God does not determine will happen in this contingent world.

And you keep saying that, too. Why? It's not important to this argument that God causes anything. It's only relevant that he knows what's coming.

Think about the pinball machine analogy again. I did not cause the machine to behave in a predictable way. I just discovered what it would do.

Let's extend that analogy and make the pinball machine humanlike such that we wonder whether it is conscious. Maybe it can speak to us, and it tells us that it has free will, that it is in control of the number that will appear at the end of the game for the free game match. It tells us that it freely chooses a number each game.

We smile knowingly at it and say, "No, you don't make that choice. It is determined for you. It only feels like it was your idea and that you could have chosen differently."

The machine asks, "Why do you say that? How can you know that even if it's true?" and we answer, "Because your so-called choice is known to me before it is to you."

I will ask it again: How does what God knows affect our ability to choose?

And I will answer again. It doesn't. Knowing the future doesn't cause it.

What you do not understand is that God does not exist in TIME the way we do on this earth.

That's another self-contradictory comment. To exist is to exist in time. To exist is to persist in reality through some duration of time. If you claim that your god thinks and acts, it does so in time. It progresses from before states to after states. Simply declaring that that can occur outside of time doesn't change the fact that it requires time to persist, think, or act.

There's the problem with belief by faith. One can come to belief false, unfalsifiable, and incoherent ideas that he would be shielded from if he only accepted ideas that were vetted empirically. He wouldn't accept or believe impossible ideas even if he couldn't see that they were impossible because there wouldn't be sufficient supporting evidence for the belief to accept it.

But if one collects ideas using faith, and they become important or even sacred, if they are believed to be fact with certitude, then one will occasionally find himself in the position you're in trying to defend incoherent ideas like the compatibility of libertarian free will and strict determinism or the idea of existence outside of time. We can say those words, and we can believe them if we don't think too hard about them, but we can't make them coherent. We're simply stuck believing impossible things. As you say, nobody can explain these things to you. Nobody can make you understand what you have a stake in not understanding.

 

[Ignatius A]

My contention is that you would not think like that had you not accepted on faith decades ago that omniscience and libertarian free will can coexist. My evidence is that the only people making your argument are other Abrahamists, while unbelievers tell you that it is YOUR belief that is illogical. That you can't see that doesn't make it not so.

Look at the posting on this, page 9 of this thread. I wrote, " If somebody were able to correctly predict everything to come, then that would demonstrate that the world is deterministic. That wouldn't be possible if people actually could choose either of two options. If they could, you'd have to wait to see what they chose to know what follows after that choice. That also might be the case in a deterministic world if we can't derive the algorithm for deciding what that choice will be, but if we could have that knowledge, then we would have demonstrated both that the universe is deterministic and that we are omniscient."

You answered, "I would never agree with that even if I was an atheist because it is drop dead illogical," which is not an argument or rebuttal, but just a dismissal out of hand and a repeat of your already-rebutted claim.

Also on this page, Rational Agnotic wrote, "If your future choice is already known with certainty, then you couldn't make a different choice. If your choice is constrained to this single possibility, then in what sense would it be free? It only feels free but it can't actually be free by definition."

That got this from Ignatius: "You're assuming that foreknowledge determines what happens. That's illogical," which is itself illogical (a straw man fallacy. No such claim was made.

It's not a coincidence that the two critical thinkers make the same argument as one another and two Abrahamists take the same opposite position as one another. And I can guarantee you that if you brought in two more people with our opinions, they would also be critical thinkers, and if you brought in two more people with your opinion, they would be Abrahamists. You can confirm that for yourself in these recent threads. Look at who is insisting that free will exists in those threads, and who is willing to consider that the will only feels free:

Lets solve Free will once and for all!!

Do you Think we have Free Will

This is from a text on philosophy called Free Will and Divine Omniscience | DigiNole.

"A traditionally difficult problem in the Philosophy of Religion is the one that divine omniscience, particularly divine foreknowledge, poses for free will. If God knows in advance how we will act, it looks as if we cannot act freely because we cannot act other than in accordance with God's foreknowledge. Thus, it looks like God's full omniscience and free will are incompatible. But this is problematic precisely because both God's full omniscience and human and divine free will are very important in Christian theology. In this dissertation, I discuss this dilemma and attempt to find the best solution available to the Christian theist. In Chapter 1, I introduce and discuss the problem, which I refer to as "the foreknowledge dilemma." I then consider and ultimately reject three of the most commonly offered solutions."

Here' the problem which has been taken seriously by some of the greatest minds, the one you dismissed as illogical without counterargument. They come from the Wiki article Argument from free will - Wikipedia.

Noted Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides described the conflict between divine omnipotence and his creation's person's free will, in traditional terms of good and evil actions, as follows:


A "standard Anglican" theologian gave a similar description of Christian revelation:


A logical formulation of this argument might go as follows:[1]

1. God knows choice "C" that a human would claim to "make freely".
2. It is now necessary that C.
3. If it is now necessary that C, then C cannot be otherwise (this is the definition of “necessary”). That is, there are no actual "possibilities" due to predestination.
4. If you cannot do otherwise when you act, you do not act freely (Principle of Alternate Possibilities)
5. Therefore, when you do an act, you will not do it freely.

It's fine that you choose to disregard all of this, but it doesn't make this position illogical or yours logical.

How that that translates to you could have chosen differently? It doesn't. If God knows what you will do before you know yourself, and if he is always correct, then you had no choice. An instruction generated in extra-conscious neural circuits was delivered to the subject of consciousness, which dutifully executed the instruction while mistakenly thinking that the desire was created by itself in the conscious arena - the so-called illusion of free will. The desire to reach for the red or blue shirt would not be a choice the subject of consciousness if it could be accurately foretold without fail. More examples of what would be the illusion of freewill if the decision were foreknown - people appearing to make a choice that was known by a god before it was known by the apparent chooser - wouldn't change that.

I'll let Trailblazer answer that for you:

choice an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities. Oxford Languages

An example of that is being offered a choice to enter heaven or to choose hell instead. If I have the choice, my choice would not be hell. And, of course, if there is an omniscient god, then choice is illusion anyway. That god would know in advance whether you would choose hell or not.

It seems that it is you that doesn't understand what the word choice means.

I marvel at how zealous, Abrahamic faith corrupts reasoning. These religions do so deliberately and selfishly without concern for the consequences for the believer.

Here are some lyrics from Dylan's License To Kill:

Now, they take him, and they teach him, and they groom him for life
And they set him, on a path where he's bound to get ill
[snip]
Now he's hell-bent for destruction, he's afraid and confused
And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill

So foreknowledge does not make things happen. Period.

 

[shunyadragon]

So foreknowledge does not make things happen. Period.

Foreknowledge absolutely determines what happens, period

 

[Ignatius A]

Foreknowledge absolutely determines what happens, period

If only that was true.

So if I am standing on a cliff and can see two trains headed in opposite directions.on the same track and I know they will collide then my knowledge that they will collide has caused that collision to happen.

 

[Kenny]

Yes, I have created a question that I have been pondering about for many years which no Christian or Muslim could possibly answer if God is loving. Here is my question to those Muslims and Christians that strongly believe in their faiths.

Question:

Why would an omniscient and loving God knowingly create many people he knows he will one day throw into hell after they get done living out their lives?

Argument:

So, he creates a bunch of people he already knows will go to hell before they even die. What's the point? It's like setting up someone for failure from the very beginning for your own sadistic pleasure and the thrill of it! Why believe in such a God?

Thank you.

I think that there are questions that need to be answered here...

1) Who is it that creates the babies? Is it God or a man and a woman coming together and sowing baby seeds?
2) If you had a baby that you knew was going to be a drug addict but that his child was going to invent a cure for cancer… would you not have the first baby?

So I think your questions are lacking a foundation to look at it with understanding.

 

[Trailblazer]

You keep repeating that, but never explain how it is possible to know how the future will unfold and also possible for people to freely make decisions.

I did explain that, more than once. However, you have never explained how it is impossible for people to freely make decisions if God knows the future.

Yes, I know.

No nonbeliever can tell me WHY my belief is illogical because it is not illogical, it is logical.

Not to me. You just keep reasserting that the impossible is possible. You just keep saying that God knows all but we still have freedom to do other than what God foresees.

I never said that we will do other than what God foresees. Whatever we do will be what God has foreseen but we still have the freedom to choose between move than one option. Whatever option we choose will be what God foresaw (what God knew we would choose.)

In other words, what God knows we will choose does not constrain our choices. God simply knows what we will choose because God is all-knowing.

Those are the same thing if the prediction is always correct.

Humans make predictions. God does not need to predict because God knows everything simultaneously.
God's knowledge is always correct because God is all-knowing and infallible.

And you keep saying that, too. Why? It's not important to this argument that God causes anything. It's only relevant that he knows what's coming.

God knows what is coming. So what? All that means is that whatever we CHOOSE (of all the available options) will be what God knew we would choose.

Think about the pinball machine analogy again. I did not cause the machine to behave in a predictable way. I just discovered what it would do.

Let's extend that analogy and make the pinball machine humanlike such that we wonder whether it is conscious. Maybe it can speak to us, and it tells us that it has free will, that it is in control of the number that will appear at the end of the game for the free game match. It tells us that it freely chooses a number each game.

We smile knowingly at it and say, "No, you don't make that choice. It is determined for you. It only feels like it was your idea and that you could have chosen differently."

The machine asks, "Why do you say that? How can you know that even if it's true?" and we answer, "Because your so-called choice is known to me before it is to you."

The choice was known by God before the human made the choice, but the human choice was not determined by God's foreknowledge, that is what you simply cannot grasp.

The choice is determined by humans as soon as they make the choice. God has always known what that choice would be because God is all-knowing.

And I will answer again. It doesn't. Knowing the future doesn't cause it.

That is not what I asked.
I asked: How does what God knows affect our ability to choose?

That's another self-contradictory comment. To exist is to exist in time. To exist is to persist in reality through some duration of time. If you claim that your god thinks and acts, it does so in time. It progresses from before states to after states. Simply declaring that that can occur outside of time doesn't change the fact that it requires time to persist, think, or act.

You make bold claims that you have no way to support. You do not know how God exists, whether in time or outside of time, nobody knows that.

But even if God exists in some kind of time, it is not he same kind of time in which we exist in on earth. Measurement of time on earth is determined by the orbit of the earth around the sun, and the moon around the earth. When there is no more sunrise, and no more sunset, that kind of time does not exist.

I said: What you do not understand is that God does not exist in TIME the way we do on this earth.
Logically speaking, God cannot exist in TIME the way we do on this earth because God is not on earth.

 

[Trailblazer]

Foreknowledge absolutely determines what happens, period

Please explain how foreknowledge absolutely 'determines' what happens.

“Every act ye meditate is as clear to Him as is that act when already accomplished. There is none other God besides Him. His is all creation and its empire. All stands revealed before Him; all is recorded in His holy and hidden Tablets. This fore-knowledge of God, however, should not be regarded as having caused the actions of men, just as your own previous knowledge that a certain event is to occur, or your desire that it should happen, is not and can never be the reason for its occurrence.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 150

 

[shunyadragon]

If only that was true.

Ir is true. Foreknowledge offers absolutely no options.

So if I am standing on a cliff and can see two trains headed in opposite directions.on the same track and I know they will collide then my knowledge that they will collide has caused that collision to happen.

No, not relevant. First, you only have the foreknowledge if you actually caused the trains to collide. If you did not cause the trains to collide then you did not have foreknowledge. You simply saw the trains headed toward each other. It reality you would "know the trains collided until after it happened.

I beleive the subject is the foreknowledge of God, and not fallible humans like you or me.

 

[Comradio251]

I think that there are questions that need to be answered here...


2) If you had a baby that you knew was going to be a drug addict but that his child was going to invent a cure for cancer… would you not have the first baby?

Okay, well, being myself who is not infinitely intelligent like I assume God would be and therefore am not capable of telling you what my 'kid' would be like in let's say 20 years time, I'm not fit to say whether my kid would be a drug addict or a doctor in the future.

But if God is infinitely intelligent then He already knows what my kid's life would be like in 20 years time and moreover, knows what his fate would be.

1) Who is it that creates the babies? Is it God or a man and a woman coming together and sowing baby seeds?

Of course, the two opposite sexes ultimately cause the baby to form in the woman's womb but the foreknowledge of this occurring was already determined by God to happen at a certain time.

God is omniscient, isn't he? So He should know at exactly what time which couple will have a kid and He will know exactly how that kid's life will play out.

 

[shunyadragon]

Please explain how foreknowledge absolutely 'determines' what happens.

“Every act ye meditate is as clear to Him as is that act when already accomplished. There is none other God besides Him. His is all creation and its empire. All stands revealed before Him; all is recorded in His holy and hidden Tablets. This fore-knowledge of God, however, should not be regarded as having caused the actions of men, just as your own previous knowledge that a certain event is to occur, or your desire that it should happen, is not and can never be the reason for its occurrence.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 150

Cause is not the issue. It is simply the nature of absolute foreknowledge by God. I do not believe that God claims foreknowledge of all events. Humans have at least a degree of Free Will.

 

[shunyadragon]

I think that there are questions that need to be answered here...

1) Who is it that creates the babies? Is it God or a man and a woman coming together and sowing baby seeds?
2) If you had a baby that you knew was going to be a drug addict but that his child was going to invent a cure for cancer… would you not have the first baby?

So I think your questions are lacking a foundation to look at it with understanding.

This does not address the question of the foreknowledge of God, which is the question of the thread.

Humans have some knowledge of the past and present to predict to a degree future events, but that is NOT foreknowledge by definition.

 

[Trailblazer]

First, you only have the foreknowledge if you actually caused the trains to collide. If you did not cause the trains to collide then you did not have foreknowledge.

How does God's foreknowledge cause the trains to collide?

 

[shunyadragon]

How does God's foreknowledge cause the trains to collide?

God's foreknowledge may not determine the trains collide. Humans have at least a degree of Free Will concerning the outcome of cause and effect events..

 

[Trailblazer]

Cause is not the issue. It is simply the nature of absolute foreknowledge by God. I do not believe that God claims foreknowledge of all events. Humans have at least a degree of Free Will.

According to Baha'u'llah God has foreknowledge of all events.

"Every act ye meditate is as clear to Him as is that act when already accomplished. All stands revealed before Him; all is recorded in His holy and hidden Tablets." Gleanings, p. 150

My questions still stand. How does God's foreknowledge cause anything to happen? How does God's foreknowledge limit human free will?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So foreknowledge does not make things happen. Period

Yes, that is what I said. Shunya disagreed, but I think that he was thinking about an omniscient AND omnipotent agent.

If you learned to correctly predict all future events everywhere for all time the way I did for number matches on a particular pinball machine, but on the ultimate scale, you would have proven that the universe is deterministic, that libertarian free will doesn't exist, (thanks to Shunya for teaching me to add that first word to the next two to distinguish it from the illusion of free will), and that you were now omniscient. But if you're not also omnipotent, then you aren't the reason for any of those things or the source of the laws they follow and which you now use to predict their future behavior.

you have never explained how it is impossible for people to freely make decisions if God knows the future.

I have, but you haven't understood me.

No nonbeliever can tell me WHY my belief is illogical

Agree.

because it is not illogical, it is logical.

Disagree.

what God knows we will choose does not constrain our choices

Agree, but it does mean that they are determined and not by the consciousness agent.

That is not what I asked. I asked: How does what God knows affect our ability to choose?

My answer is the same as the last time you asked it. "It doesn't. Knowing the future doesn't cause it." I don't believe I can explain that to you, either.

You make bold claims that you have no way to support. You do not know how God exists, whether in time or outside of time, nobody knows that.

I don't know that any gods exist, but I do know what existence is. I can tell you the three qualities that all existing things possess and which no nonexistent entity possess. To exist is to be real or actual, that is, a part of reality, which means it can be found at some time in some place and can affect and be affected by other real, existent objects and processes. If a god can affect any part of nature at any time, then it exists, it exists in time, and it is a part of nature (reality).

Measurement of time on earth is determined by the orbit of the earth around the sun, and the moon around the earth.

Not anymore.

When there is no more sunrise, and no more sunset, that kind of time does not exist.

Time will exist long after there is no sun or earth.

God cannot exist in TIME the way we do on this earth because God is not on earth.

Neither are the Martian rovers, but I'm pretty sure that they exist in time. Maybe you meant because God is not in the universe. That may well be. I see no evidence to the contrary.

 

[Kenny]

Okay, well, being myself who is not infinitely intelligent like I assume God would be and therefore am not capable of telling you what my 'kid' would be like in let's say 20 years time, I'm not fit to say whether my kid would be a drug addict or a doctor in the future.

But if God is infinitely intelligent then He already knows what my kid's life would be like in 20 years time and moreover, knows what his fate would be.

Of course, the two opposite sexes ultimately cause the baby to form in the woman's womb but the foreknowledge of this occurring was already determined by God to happen at a certain time.

God is omniscient, isn't he? So He should know at exactly what time which couple will have a kid and He will know exactly how that kid's life will play out.

I think you are wanting a place where there is no free will where pre-destination is the rule of thumb. Doesn’t that then make us merely robots going to our end destination?

And is it God’s fault that we make babies?

 

[Kenny]

This does not address the question of the foreknowledge of God, which is the question of the thread.

Humans have some knowledge of the past and present to predict to a degree future events, but that is NOT foreknowledge by definition.

Not really.

We already know that the world is going from bad to worse. Does that change the fact that people still decide to have babies?

Foreknowledge means we have a means and a way to change our future. IMV

 

[shunyadragon]

Not really.

Yess really

We already know that the world is going from bad to worse. Does that change the fact that people still decide to have babies?

No we do not know that the world is going from bad to worse. This is from your pessimistic Theist perspective. It is really not the subject at hand. In fact things are better for many people. The Black are free from the slavery of the past and the "Jim Crow South is slowly passing. Unfortunately, were are still dealing with tribal and Nationalist dominion wars, and efforts to persecute the LGBTQ community where in the Islamic world and in the Christian nation Uganda it is punishably by death.

So there are good sides and bad in today's world. There will always be violence, wars and bad things happening as long as humans are human.

Foreknowledge means we have a means and a way to change our future. IMV

It is not the subject of the thread. It concerns God.

Foreknow; Foreknowledge Meaning - Bible Definition and References

Discover the meaning of Foreknow; Foreknowledge in the Bible. Study the definition of Foreknow; Foreknowledge with multiple Bible Dictionaries and Encyclopedias and find scripture references in the Old and New Testaments.

www.biblestudytools.com

Foreknowledge Based on Foreordination: God's foreknowledge, according to the Scripture teaching, is based upon His plan or eternal purpose, which embraces everything that comes to pass. God is never represented as a mere onlooker seeing the future course of events, but having no part in it.

 

[setarcos]

Why would an omniscient and loving God knowingly create many people he knows he will one day throw into hell after they get done living out their lives?

In order to answer this one must understand the differences between how (the Christian God) God is perceived to be and creates verses how humans are perceived to be and create. I'll attempt to clarify below...

So, he creates a bunch of people he already knows will go to hell before they even die. What's the point? It's like setting up someone for failure from the very beginning for your own sadistic pleasure and the thrill of it! Why believe in such a God?

The Christian God is a creator God. In order to be a creator God that God must create. So far self explanatory.
However, most people who aren't familiar with the concept of God as it is known in Christianity and even the philosophers God seem to think that God can do absolutely anything without restraint. That is incorrect. God cannot manifest itself contradictorily nor create contradiction within reality. Hence questions like "Can God create a rock big enough that it couldn't move it? or Can God create a God greater than itself? or Can God lie?" etc. are all meaningless and void of realization.
Scripture tells us God manifests reality simply by his word alone. The "mind" or will of God creates and sustains reality. Where our thoughts are manifested through our physical labors according to our abilities to manipulate what has been given in creation by God, Gods thoughts are synonymous with its will and its will with manifested reality according to its infinite ability to do what is possible to do in reality without contradiction. That is the theory within Christianity.
By now most who ask about the Christian God are aware of its defined attributes ; Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, etc.
The scriptures state that God created for its own "pleasure" and glorification. However glorification requires perfect justice. God must be perfectly justified in his glory.
In order to be perfectly justified God must be perfectly Just. In order to manifest perfect Justice in reality so that God can be perfectly just, God must manifest its alternative or else contradiction arises.
God didn't create people to go to hell. In order to create a perfectly justified creation God had to manifest the inevitable possibility of evil existing in such a creation. And while evil is inevitable in such a creation, at the same time the manifestation of any particular evil at any particular place in said creation is a product of the probability of the mechanisms of creation or our will manifesting such things.

Why believe in such a God?

Anybody who tries to force you to doesn't understand Jesus's message. That being said your free to believe or not believe. To hate or love.
But the Christian theory is that only by embracing God can we hope to gain perfect justice in this creation. What happens to us happens to us because God created a free creation. Gods love and gift to mankind is that even though we must inevitably suffer injustices in this world it is offering us the possibility to gain perfect justice for that suffering. That's my theory anyway...Bitter pill that it is.

 

[Comradio251]

I think you are wanting a place where there is no free will where pre-destination is the rule of thumb. Doesn’t that then make us merely robots going to our end destination?

You could say we might as well be all puppets on strings being toyed with for God's pleasure. However, I think your arguments are digressing from the main point of my premise which is about an omniscient God knowingly creating unbelievers that He already knows will go to hell after they finish living their lives.

And is it God’s fault that we make babies?

Do you believe God created the
process of birth? Then I guess it's his 'fault.'
It sounds to me your inquiry implies that 'it's bad' God created the process of birth based on your realization of how cruel my premise would be if it were true. That's the point, I don't believe God would be cruel in that way.