God versus science

[Aeson]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Maimonides addresses the first, free will question and teaches that God's wisdom is not like our wisdom. "Because My thoughts are not as your thoughts, and your ways are not as Mine, so says God." (Isaiah 55:8) Our wisdom is based on cause and effect. We cannot project our method of knowledge onto God.

"So says [Isaiah]". Thanks for the enlightenment.

How God knows something is not how man knows, and therefore, His knowledge does not preclude us from free choice.

"Will" and "choice" are different things. A computer program can choose, but computer programs don't have will. (At least not of the same calibre humans do... yet)

I accept we make choices. It is obvious that we do. But we do not make free choices. Free choice is even more ludicrous than free will. For a choice to be free, there could be no other influence on the choice other than a person's will, which is easily disproved. There are a vast number of hypothetical options which are unavailable.

A person can't just choose to not obey the laws of gravity for instance. If a person was thrown out of a plane without a parachute (or other device), at that point they still have choices to make... "Should I flap my arms really fast, scream, reduce/increase my aerodynamic profile, aim for a certain landing site, say a prayer, and/or enjoy the ride?"... but all the available options still lead to a rather hard landing. The one who threw them out of the plane made that determination.

As an example: a weatherman may say that it will snow, and he knows this 100%, and then it snows. But he is not the cause.

This analogy does not apply. If the weatherman had created the universe and the underlying physics to drive the whole system... knowing perfectly that it would lead to the snow... yes, he would have been the cause of the snow.

He did not make nature produce snow. He merely studied nature, saw all the causes involved, and determined that since a few factors are ripe, it will definitely snow in a certain region. Again, he was not the cause of the snow.

If you are saying God did not make nature... sure... but that's obviously not applicable to my stated hypothetical where God did make Z.

This is somewhat analogous to how God is also not the cause of our actions, although he knows what we will choose.

If you create something you know will end up performing a certain way, you have made the decision then and there what will be performed. Doesn't matter whether it will be a choice on the part of the performer or not, you have determined the outcome of that chocie already.

However, God does not need to rely on cause and effect to know man's action. He has a completely different method, unknown to man, and which does not interfere with our free will.

I'd accept it as a belief. Certainly there may be things we can't know. But as a logical statement...

If it's unknown to man, how do you know it doesn't interfere with our "free will"? Or that it exists at all? You are making a positive claim about the nature of something you have proposed is unknowable by man. They are mutually exclusive statements.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Aeson


"So says [Isaiah]". Thanks for the enlightenment.



"Will" and "choice" are different things. A computer program can choose, but computer programs don't have will. (At least not of the same calibre humans do... yet)

I accept we make choices. It is obvious that we do. But we do not make free choices. Free choice is even more ludicrous than free will. For a choice to be free, there could be no other influence on the choice other than a person's will, which is easily disproved. There are a vast number of hypothetical options which are unavailable.

A person can't just choose to not obey the laws of gravity for instance. If a person was thrown out of a plane without a parachute (or other device), at that point they still have choices to make... "Should I flap my arms really fast, scream, reduce/increase my aerodynamic profile, aim for a certain landing site, say a prayer, and/or enjoy the ride?"... but all the available options still lead to a rather hard landing. The one who threw them out of the plane made that determination.



This analogy does not apply. If the weatherman had created the universe and the underlying physics to drive the whole system... knowing perfectly that it would lead to the snow... yes, he would have been the cause of the snow.



If you are saying God did not make nature... sure... but that's obviously not applicable to my stated hypothetical where God did make Z.



If you create something you know will end up performing a certain way, you have made the decision then and there what will be performed. Doesn't matter whether it will be a choice on the part of the performer or not, you have determined the outcome of that chocie already.



I'd accept it as a belief. Certainly there may be things we can't know. But as a logical statement...

If it's unknown to man, how do you know it doesn't interfere with our "free will"? Or that it exists at all? You are making a positive claim about the nature of something you have proposed is unknowable by man. They are mutually exclusive statements.

Im quoting Maimonides, a 12th century philosopher who believed that the bible was the revealed word of God, and true. His goal here is NOT to demonstrate free will from first principles, but to show that it IS reconcilable with biblical beliefs about God.

That God is radically other, and acts and thinks in ways that man does not know, is central to his philosophy, and he uses Isaiah as a prooftext to any who would say his assertion runs counter to the bible.

The weatherman analogy is obviously not from Maimonides, and is a little awkward. Maimonides asserts, in keeping rabbinic theology going back 1000 years when he wrote, that A. Man has free will, at least over the question of following God or not and B. That God did create nature. Now the problem he faces is not Gods power as creator. We have an analogy today that matches that - a game designer could program a virtual world, with all its rules, but allow a random element. (Whether a random element is "free" is a question Im not sure came up (or whether "randomness truely exists) - the point is that you can create a system that leaves somethings out of the control of the creator). His problem, that is addressed above, is with KNOWLEDGE. IE even IF its possible for the creator to create a creature who is free to choose within the bounds a creation that is not yet believed to be a Newtonian clockwork, would Gods foreknowledge preclude free will - if mans will is free, than God cant know it - just as if I know what will happen in any system tomorrow, it must be already determined. THAT is what M's assertion about the different way God knows, and the authors weatheman analogy, fits. M's assertion is that there is nothing logically necessary about the idea that foreknowledge means lack of free will, unless foreknowledge is based on cause and effect. It may seem unsatisfying, but its a very Maimonidean way of thinking, one that is based fundamentally on a denial of ALL anthropomorphising of the deity, and the assertion that most theological problems derive from such anthropomorphizing. Hes trying to save God from the "old man with a beard"

[Aeson]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Im quoting Maimonides, a 12th century philosopher who believed that the bible was the revealed word of God, and true. His goal here is NOT to demonstrate free will from first principles, but to show that it IS reconcilable with biblical beliefs about God.

I know that.

I was not saying the bible contradicts itself, or that free will is irreconcilable with the bible. I chose to overlook the fact that your reply was not applicable to the statements I had made so as to discuss it with you.

That God is radically other, and acts and thinks in ways that man does not know, is central to his philosophy, and he uses Isaiah as a prooftext to any who would say his assertion runs counter to the bible.

I was not making the assertion, so why do you bring it up?

The weatherman analogy is obviously not from Maimonides, and is a little awkward. Maimonides asserts, in keeping rabbinic theology going back 1000 years when he wrote, that A. Man has free will, at least over the question of following God or not and B. That God did create nature. Now the problem he faces is not Gods power as creator.

That should read: "Now the problem he faces [if we assume the bible as infalible word of God] is not Gods power as creator."

We have an analogy today that matches that - a game designer could program a virtual world, with all its rules, but allow a random element. (Whether a random element is "free" is a question Im not sure came up (or whether "randomness truely exists) - the point is that you can create a system that leaves somethings out of the control of the creator).

Pertaining to one of your tangents... Las Vegas is a good example of how "randomness" is not "free" (or random for that matter). Otherwise everyone, except perhaps a few masochists, would hit the jackpot until the casinos closed down.

His problem, that is addressed above, is with KNOWLEDGE. IE even IF its possible for the creator to create a creature who is free to choose within the bounds a creation that is not yet believed to be a Newtonian clockwork, would Gods foreknowledge preclude free will - if mans will is free, than God cant know it - just as if I know what will happen in any system tomorrow, it must be already determined.

He does have a problem with "knowledge", I agree. And "knowledge" was a given in my hypothetical. And as I may point out... you are responding to my use of the term, not Maimonides' bastardization of it. My use of the term is strictly "cause and effect". That is why this entire subject doesn't apply to my initial statement.

THAT is what M's assertion about the different way God knows, and the authors weatheman analogy, fits.

If you wanted a weatherman analogy that would fit, and be applicable to the issue my statement was addressing... which you posted it in response to... it would go something like this:

"A weatherman, who is consistantly 100% right (to any degree of accuracy) about the weather, and had created everything, doesn't tell anyone how he does it because no one else could understand. And so we can't reliably say anything about his methods.

But I'll claim that his methods are not the cause of the weather... because it's written in a book... written by a person we have just disqualified from understanding what he was talking about. Oh, and the guy I'm talking about is in the book too..."

I'd agree there is something interesting in there though... if the debate is about the reconcilability of "free will" with biblical passages. But I am talking about the reconcilability of "free will" with a specified (hypothetical) nature of God.

M's assertion is that there is nothing logically necessary about the idea that foreknowledge means lack of free will, unless foreknowledge is based on cause and effect.

Obviously.

Now, if you wish to extend it from metaphysics to reality, the problem is in providing an example of (100% reliable) foreknowledge not based on cause an effect. Otherwise it sits there on the "irrellevent" shelf with all the other "it's possible because we can't disprove it" stuff.

And if you want to prove that "free will" exists, you can't stop there. If we operate under "cause and effect" it is still a predetermined system with no "free will" regardless of how God would predict the outcome. Disproving that God's "knowledge" affects "free will" does not prove there are no other limits on "free will". In fact, accepting that God's knowledge can't operate as our's does and still be compatible with "free will" is an admission that "free will" does not exist. At least as long as you accept that there is "cause and effect" determining or affecting our choices.

Basically, by it's very definition, "free will" can never be proven to exist. You need to grab some of that "unknowable" knowing for yourself first. Because any proof we can do requires defining a system, and "free will" requires there be no system, whether random, "random", causal, or otherwise existing outside the "will" of the person.

It may seem unsatisfying, but its a very Maimonidean way of thinking, one that is based fundamentally on a denial of ALL anthropomorphising of the deity, and the assertion that most theological problems derive from such anthropomorphizing. Hes trying to save God from the "old man with a beard"

Like I said... if you want to believe God works in a way we can't comprehend, and that that fixes all the logical problems, fine. It's your belief, and I wouldn't even claim it is false because it's solely the realm of belief. But if you start making positive claims about the nature of God's "knowledge", you have contradicted that belief, and that is something that logic can deal with.